SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 



^I)a^0pearean Marsf 



I 

SHAKESPEARE AS A DRAMATIC ARTIST 

Already Published 

II 
SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 



SHAKESPEARE 



AND 



VOLTAIRE 



BY 



THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY, L.H.D., LL.D., 

Professor of English in Yale University 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1902 



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Copyright, 1902, 
By Charles Scribner's Sons 



Published September, rgo3. 






UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON 
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 






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PREFACE 

In the opening volume of this series I sought to 
show, among other things, that the controversy between 
what we now commonly call the classical and romantic 
dramas was carried on as vigorously during the Eliza- 
bethan era as it has been at any period since. The 
present names did not exist, it is true ; but the realities 
were just as active and as potent. The lines were 
drawn as rigidly then as they have been at any time ; 
and according to their preferences and beliefs men 
allied themselves with the one or the other party. 

Evidence of this was furnished from the mouths of 
various witnesses. But had not their testimony been 
handed down, the existence of such a condition of 
things could have been inferred, not merely from the 
acts of Shakespeare, but from his very words. From 
them it is clear that he not only recognized the distinc- 
tion between the two kinds of drama, but that he ad- 
visedly ranged himself upon the side of the romanticists. 
His rejection of the unities, for illustration, was not 
accidental but deliberate. He made this evident not 
only by his marked conformity to them in at least one 
instance ; in two or three others he practically pro- 
claimed his dissent from them in the references he 
made to the arguments by which they were supported. 
This single fact is sufficient of itself to dispose of the 



PREFACE 

theory, widely accepted during the eighteenth century 
and not altogether discarded even now, that his was a 
genius which worked independently of rule and acted 
merely under the impulse of a blind inspiration. 

Shakespeare's choice of his side could hardly have 
failed to exert a distinct influence durinsj the asfe in 
which he flourished, as it certainly exerted a decisive 
influence later. At any rate, as the result of the conflict 
which went on, the romantic drama remained at the end 
of the Elizabethan period master of the field. There 
were those who denounced it violently before it had 
achieved its victory. There were dissenters from it 
after its triumph had been assured. Not unfrequently 
there was on the part of some a theoretical recognition 
of the justice of the doctrines of the classicists, with a 
disregard or evasion of them in practice. Still, it is 
safe to say that up to the period of the civil war the 
form of the drama which is best exemplified by the 
plays of Shakespeare prevailed generally over that form 
of it which sought to be in accord with the slow-endeav- 
oring art — to use Milton's phrase — of Ben Jonson. 

This condition of things was reversed after the Res- 
toration. French ideas became not merely prevalent 
but prevailing. Classicism took possession of the Eng- 
lish stage. The hold it gained was still further con- 
firmed during the eighteenth century. One thing only 
stood in the way of its triumph being made absolutely 
complete. This was the continuous and increasing 
popularity of Shakespeare. As time went on, piece 
after piece of his was revived and became a permanent 
addition to the collection of plays which the theatres 



PREFA CE 

held in stock. The indifference he had displayed to the 
canons of the so-called classical drama sometimes called 
forth derision, sometimes regret; but far more than 
either it tended to excite doubt as to the validity of the 
laws disregarded. The feeling strengthened with the 
progress of the century. By its end respect for the con- 
ventions insisted upon by the classicists had largely 
disappeared. In a few years more the sway of its 
grand central doctrine, that of the unities, had been 
utterly overthrown in practice. Men who wrote for the 
stage might henceforth regard it or not, as it suited 
their pleasure or their whim. But the belief in the 
necessity of its observance was gone. This is to say 
that in the early part of the nineteenth century the 
practice of playwrights had swung back to that gen- 
erally adopted by their predecessors in the latter part 
of the sixteenth. 

Then arose a body of critical teachers — of whom 
Schlegel in Germany and Coleridge in England are the 
great exemplars — who came forward to defend the 
methods which had come once more to prevail; to 
affirm that they were in conformity to art, and not in 
violation of it; and that in consequence, not Corneille 
and Racine, but Shakespeare was what Lessing had long 
before proclaimed him to be, the true successor of the 
Greek tragedians. But these writers did not create the 
revolution, as it has often been asserted. They justified 
it, they gave men a reason for the course they followed or 
the faith they held. But the revolution itself had been 
already accomplished. That was the work of Shake- 
speare, and of Shakespeare alone. 

vii 



PREFACE 

So much contained in the previous work it has been 
necessary to premise before entering upon the subject of 
the present one. For the victory which was gained was 
gained very slowly. There was one man in particular who 
did more than any other, or rather more than all' others, to 
delay in every country of Europe the revolt against clas- 
sicism, and in some to arrest it for more than a generation. 
This man was Voltaire. It is the story of the relations 
he held to Shakespeare, of the influence originally exerted 
upon him by the English dramatist, of the war he waged 
against the latter's growing reputation on the Continent, 
of the hostility evoked in turn towards himself in Eng- 
land, which I have sought to relate in the following 
pages. It is a story which has never been told save in 
part. Certain portions of it — especially that dealing 
with the history of Shakespeare in France and Germany 
— have been made the subject of excellent treatises in the 
languages of those two countries. These works have 
necessarily devoted more or less space to Voltaire's words 
and acts. But in none of them has there been any at- 
tempt to portray his attitude throughout with the fulness 
found here ; still further, in none of them has there been 
anything but the most meagre references to the attitude 
taken towards him in turn by the English. 

To give this side of Shakespearean controversy is one 
of the main objects of the present work. Having said 
so much, I may be permitted to state in addition what is 
not one of its objects. No one will dispute the right of 
the critic, as it is usually regarded by him as his duty, to 
insist that certain things ought to have been discussed 
which the author has not chosen to discuss. But I wish 

viii 



PREFACE 

to guard against the impression that there was any de- 
sign to give here any account of the growth of Shake- 
speare's reputation on the Continent, especially in France. 
Certain general statements had to be made in regard to 
it. Certain aspects of it therefore are given, certain in- 
cidents connected with it are told, in two or three in- 
stances, with great fulness of detail. But these are 
incidental to the main purpose. They are brought in to 
throw light upon Voltaire's feelings and to explain his 
acts and utterances ; they are never told for themselves. 
One great difficulty has frequently presented itself in 
the investigation of this subject. Voltaire was con- 
stantly engaged in revising and altering his works. 
While complete editions containing the final text are 
abundant, early editions of single works are to a great 
extent inaccessible in this country. They may possibly 
be found in private libraries ; they do not seem to exist 
in public ones. Perhaps the same difficulty would be 
met everywhere outside of France. It is certainly 
noticeable that the printed catalogue of the vast col- 
lections of the British Museum shows only a very hraited 
number of these early authorities. One cannot always 
be sure in consequence that the form in which any state- 
ment of Voltaire's is finally found is the one which it 
possessed originally. Here the invaluable bibliography 
of Bengesco cannot help us, or helps us only at intervals. 
In some instances I have accordingly been prevented 
from making a positive statement where positive state- 
ment would have been most desirable. If in these in- 
stances I have been unable to tell all the truth, I can 
only hope that I have been successful in the effort to 

ix 



PREFACE 

refrain from conveying wrong impressions by that part 
of the truth which has been told. 

As was the course pursued in the preceding volume 
of this series, I have endeavored to give the reader some 
conception of the less-known men of letters who became 
involved in the controversies which went on in regard 
to Shakespeare as well as an account of the part they 
played. Furthermore, the plan indicated in the general 
introduction has been followed. This is to treat each 
subject so as to constitute it of itself an independent 
work, thereby rendering it unnecessary for the reader to 
make himself familiar with what has preceded. In the 
case of the present volume the result has been accom- 
plished by the slight summary, supplied in this preface, 
of certain conclusions reached in the previous treatise. 
The adoption of this course has likewise rendered it 
necessary to recount again a few facts which were con- 
tained in that volume. In one instance indeed a short 
quotation has been given for the second time. But even 
in repetitions necessary to render the work complete in 
itself, an effort has been made to present from a different 
point of view the details of the incidents which were 
related and the portrayal of the personages who were de- 
scribed. Nor can the whole amount of repetition be con- 
sidered as being of much consequence. At most it does 
not occupy the space of more than two or three pages. 

The next volume of this series will deal with the diffi- 
culties which exist in ascertaining definitely the text of 
Shakespeare, and the controversies which early sprang up 
in regard to the proper method of its settlement. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

I. Voltaire in England l 

II. Voltaire's Knowledge OF English Literature 17 

III. First Impressions of Shakespeare .... 41 

IV. Voltaire's Brutus and Zaire 67 

V. * The Death of Caesar ' 95 

VI. Macbeth and Mahomet, Hamlet and Si^mi- 

RAMIS 118 

VII. Resentment of the English 132 

VIIL La Place's Translation of Shakespeare . . 160 

IX. The Appeal to the Nations 182 

X. The Commentaries on Corneille 204 

XI. Second Appeal to the Nations 219 

XII. The Critic Criticised 240 

XIII. The Voltaire-Walpole Correspondence . . 258 

XIV. Two New English Adversaries 281 

XV. Attack and Defence in England 301 

XVI. Pessimistic Views of Voltaire 315 

XVII. Le Tourneur's Translation of Shakespeare . 330 

XVIII. The Wrath of Voltaire 355 

XIX. The Day of St. Louis 378 

XX. Indifference of the English 397 

XXI. Later Results of the Controversy .... 422 

XXII. General Conclusions 438 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 



CHAPTER I 

VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 

On the second of May, 1726, Voltaire was released 
from the Bastille on the condition that he should repair 
at once to England. On the following morning he set 
out for Calais. Either from fear that he would miss 
the road, or to guard against a momentary lapse of 
memory which might lead him to wander in another 
direction, a government official was commissioned to 
accompany him on the journey to that port. The in- 
structions given to the attendant were, to remain with 
the released prisoner until he saw him safely on board 
of the vessel and on his way to England. At Calais 
Voltaire remained a few days, much irritated at the 
surveillance to which he was subjected. At last he 
embarked. In a short time he found himself in a land 
separated from his own by a few leagues of water, but 
in opinions, in feelings, in tastes, divided by immeas- 
urable distances. 

The country to which he was exiled welcomed him 

cordially. To both the great Whig and Tory houses he 

had access. He came into personal contact with no 

small nmnber of the men most renowned in literature 

1 1 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

and politics. The new edition of his epic, published 
at London in the second year after his arrival, had 
on the list of its subscribers many of the most noted 
names of the English aristocracy, and was dedicated to 
the Queen of England herself. For him the barriers 
did not exist which divided the people into classes 
hostile to each other where they were not indiiferent. 
His insatiable curiosity led him to seek the society of 
men of all creeds, of all ranks, of all parties. Much 
of his time was spent at Wandsworth, a now outlying 
suburb of the great city, in the home of Everard 
Falkener, an English merchant trading with the East. 
He dined at the house of the prime minister, Walpole ; 
he lived in familiar intercourse with Walpole's bitter 
enemy, Bolingbroke, whom he had come to know long 
before in France. He made the acquaintance of patrons 
of literature like Lyttelton and Bubb Dodington, of 
philosophers like Clarke and Berkeley, of men of letters 
like Pope, Swift, Gay, Congreve, Thomson, and Young. 
Nearly three years he remained. It was long enough 
for him to learn to read English with ease, to speak it 
with a tolerable degree of fluency, and to write it with 
what his enemies chose to consider suspicious accuracy. 
It was long enough, furthermore, for him to become an 
ardent admirer of English philosophy and science as 
embodied in the works of Locke and Newton, and to 
form a limited acquaintance with English literature. 
To the immense majority of his countrymen this last 
was then not only an unknown, but an unheard-of land. 
It was while in England that Voltaire became ac- 
quainted with the works of Shakespeare. It is more 

2 



VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 

correct to say he became acquainted with some of them. 
Of many of the plays of the great dramatist he pretty 
certainly lived and died in profoundest ignorance. He 
unquestionably had them in his library; he never had 
them in his mind. From the various criticisms which, 
from time to time during the rest of his life, he poured 
forth upon the English stage, no one would get the 
slightest inkling of the fact that Shakespeare ever wrote 
a single comedy. It was not entirely Voltaire's fault. 
His knowledge of plays was derived largely from seeing 
them acted. During the time he was in England, it 
was mainly the tragedies of Shakespeare that were 
brought upon the stage. The two or three of his come- 
dies which were performed at all were not only vilely 
altered, but even in their mutilated state were then per- 
formed but rarely. The English works of this sort 
which Voltaire heard of were the composition of men 
who belonged to the period following the Restoration. 
The principal writers of them whom he knew about 
were Congreve, Wycherley, and Vanbrugh ; it is of them 
alone he speaks with any fulness. 

Ignorant as he was of Shakespeare's comedies, his 
knowledge of many of the other works of the dramatist 
was none too remarkable. The way in which he sub- 
sequently referred to some of them will clear him from 
the charge of any undue familiarity with their contents. 
' Hamlet,' ' Lear,' ' Othello,' ' Macbeth,' ' Julius Csesar,' 
' Antony and Cleopatra,' ' Romeo and Juliet,' ' Richard 
II.,' 'Richard III.,' 'Henry IV.,' 'Henry V.,' and 
'Troilus and Cressida,' comprise the plays which he at 
various times mentioned. The list would be a suffi- 

3 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

ciently satisfactory one, were it not that his remarks 
upon some of the number tend to establish his ignorance 
of them instead of indicating his knowledge. Of cer- 
tain of these he really knew little more than the names. 
The blunders he made in discussing them amply acquit 
him of intentional perversion of the meaning he mis- 
understood. The two pieces with which he was best- 
acquainted were ' Hamlet ' and ' Julius Csesar.' The 
latter, excellent as it is, is ranked by no one among the 
greatest of Shakespeare's productions ; but for some 
reason it made upon Voltaire a particularly vivid im- 
pression. It may be that he had seen it acted with 
peculiar power. It may be that the absence from it of 
a love intrigue, which he hated in tragedy, reconciled 
him in a measure to its total disregard of the dramatic 
laws which he held so precious. But to whatever cause 
his interest in it was due, it is the one of Shakespeare's 
works which on the whole plays the most prominent 
part in both his critical and creative writings, so far as 
his relations with its author are concerned. It is the 
one to which he most frequently refers for the sake of 
conveying either praise or blame. Even when it did 
not inspire direct imitation, it suggested scenes and 
plots and portrayals of character to pieces of his own. 
There was one recommendation which these two plays 
possessed. Both of them had been saved from the 
hands of the spoiler. Both continued to be presented 
in their original purity, or, as Voltaire would have con- 
sidered it, in their original impurity. In them conse- 
quently Shakespeare was seen at his best or at his 
worst, according to the way one was disposed to regard 

4 



VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 

his art. There was, furthermore, no question as to 
the favor with which these phiys, as well as others of 
the dramatist, were received. To the popularity of the 
great Elizabethan, Voltaire himself bore frequent witness. 
For the period of his residence in England it is conclu- 
sive. Excellent translations of the best French tragedies, 
excellent productions of native writers, exemplars in 
both cases of chastened and refined art, were never able, 
he observed, to draw to their representation audiences 
such as thronged the theatre whenever it was an- 
nounced that one of Shakespeare's plays was to be 
performed. 

One reason, outside of the character of the works 
themselves, ought to be added here for the steady hold 
which Shakespeare continued to retain over the men 
of the eighteenth century. To the excellence of the 
matter was generally added a well-sustained excellence 
of performance. All dramatic writings are in danger 
of suffering from having one part acted finely, and the 
others inadequately or meanly. This too common con- 
dition of things has frequently wrought havoc with the 
pieces of Shakespeare, crowded as they usually are with 
several characters of first importance. The London 
which Voltaire saw possessed but two playhouses. In 
them was largely concentrated all the theatrical talent 
to which the British isles had given birth. In the 
hands of a capable manager an opportunity was thus 
afforded for the adequate performance of great produc- 
tions, which can hardly be said to exist now, when 
those who would give most effective representation 
to its various parts are scattered over the entire land, 

5 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

or dispersed in the dozen different houses of a single 
city. This opportunity was not always improved, to be 
sure ; but during the whole century it existed. Garrick, 
for instance, was a host in himself. The English stage 
has never witnessed any one so amply endowed as he 
to fulfil all parts of a star, either in comedy or tragedy. 
Yet when in 1747 he undertook the management of 
Drury Lane, his avowed aim was to secure for it all 
the best performers that could be found. For his first 
season he assuredly succeeded. What should we think 
now of a single playhouse which should contain on its 
rolls, as his did then, about forty performers of greater 
or less distinction, with Garrick at their head, and 
including among them such actresses as Mrs. Gibber, 
Mrs. Glive, Mrs. Pritchard, and Peg Woffington ? 

The remark of Voltaire, which has just been cited, 
shows that not even the later works, which he regarded 
as representatives of refined art, were able then to 
hold their own against the overwhelming popularity 
of Shakespeare. This is not the only contribution he 
makes to the sentiment of that age in regard to the 
dramatist. His visit to England furnishes additional 
confirmation of the truth of a view which, however 
well-known, is not sufficiently well-known to keep it 
from being occasionally controverted. This is the 
general concession of Shakespeare's superiority not only 
to the playwrights of later times, but to the playwrights 
of his own time. Both the popular and the critical 
estimate agreed in recognizing his supremacy. How 
completely he had come at this period to outrank all 
his contemporaries in public opinion is made conspicu- 

6 



VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 

ous by the fact that he is the only one of the Eliza- 
bethans whom Voltaire knows. Of the dramatists of 
that earlier period, Fletcher had been for a while the 
favorite with theatre-goers after the Restoration. Jon- 
son also had then stood side by side with Shakespeare, 
at least among the critics. But with neither of these 
two had Voltaire any real acquaintance. Of one of 
them he had probably never heard ; he certainly never 
spoke of him. Of the other it would have been just 
as well had he never spoken ; for what he said estab- 
lishes not his knowledge but his ignorance. 

By Shakespeare Voltaire was both attracted and re- 
pelled. As a Frenchman, trained in the strictest rules 
of the classicists, and disposed to render those rules 
even more rigid, he was shocked beyond measure by 
the irregularities, the gross improprieties, or rather in- 
decencies, as he looked upon them, in which the greatest 
English dramatist had indulged with no apparent con- 
sciousness that his course was anything but perfectly 
proper. A man who could in all sincerity assert, as 
did Voltaire, that in the three unities, all other laws, 
that is to say, all other beauties of the drama, are 
comprised, was not likely to be impressed favorably 
by the persistent disregard of them which Shakespeare 
had manifested. He shuddered furthermore at the 
mixture of the comic and the tragic in the same pro- 
duction ; at the low characters which were brought 
upon the stage, and the low language in which they 
indulged ; at the scenes of violence, of horror, and of 
carnage which were enacted in full view of the audi- 
ence. Such practices ran counter to all his personal 

7 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

tastes and prejudices, as well as to the traditions of the 
one theatre which he believed, or tried to believe, sur- 
passed not only that of all modern nations, but that of 
the Greeks themselves. 

With these views of his he found plenty of sym- 
pathizers in the land to which he came. Had he him- 
self been disposed to hesitate about the justice of his 
conclusions, the men he met would have stood ready 
to assure him of their correctness. There existed then 
a large number of Englishmen who continued to feel 
deeply pained at the failure of Shakespeare to conform 
to the canons of art pure and undefiled. Their admira- 
tion of particular passages did not blind their eyes to 
his defects, or hinder their perception of his failure 
to reach their own exalted standard of taste. The 
attitude of condescension was invariably maintained by 
the professed arbiters of public opinion. Besides the 
common ruck of critics, who always make it a point 
to re-echo the prevalent cant of the day, there were 
men possessing abilities of no mean order who enter- 
tained and expressed sentiments of this sort. Some 
of them too had occupied or were still occupying high 
station in society. Earlier in the century Shaftesbury 
had given utterance to the then not uncommon opinion 
that the British muses were as yet in their mere infant 
state. They lisp in their cradles, he told us. They had 
scarcely arrived at anything of shapeliness of person. 
This was true of Shakespeare, Jonson, Fletcher, and 
Milton. Yet upon the great dramatist he was willing 
to bestow a good deal of praise for the justness of his 
moral and for his skill in characterization, which caused 

8 



VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 

him to be relished in spite of " his natural rudeness, 
his unpolished style, his antiquated phrase and wit, his 
want of method and coherence, and his deficiency in 
almost all the graces and ornaments of this kind of 
writinjT." i 

With this estimate Chesterfield, for a long time the 
arbiter of taste in the fashionable world, did not differ 
materially. To his son he wrote that a gentleman should 
make it a point to know the classics of every language. 
In the list he gave of English authors entitled to that 
distinction Shakespeare did not appear ; though in the 
corresponding one in French, Corneille, Racine, and 
Moliere were to be found,^ He had no disposition, how- 
ever, to proscribe the dramatist. To a female friend in 
France he sent as a present the works of four writers as 
ambassadors from his own country. In the number 
Shakespeare was included. But with the announcement 
of the gift he felt it incumbent to put in a qualifying 
statement, lest it should be supposed that he condoned 
the irregularities of the playwright, or failed to recog- 
nize his errors. He told his correspondent that she 
should give to Shakespeare the precise sort of reception 
which she deemed fitting, inasmuch as he sometimes 
merited the best and sometimes the worst.^ This guarded 
approbation was the utmost which the thoroughly 
superior people of that time felt that they could properly 
give. From Bolingbroke, with whom Voltaire spent 
much of his time, he learned that the English stage did 

1 Advice to an Author, Part II. sec. 1 and sec 3 (1710). 

2 Letter to his son, March 2, 1752. 

3 Letter to Madame du Boccage, March 4, 1752. 

9 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

not possess a single good tragedy. Let us be just. By 
this was meant one good tragedy as a whole. The 
existence of admirable scenes was conceded ; it was as 
a complete work of art that every play failed. 

But besides being a Frenchman, Voltaire was a man 
of genius. As a man of genius he could not help being 
impressed by certain qualities which the English dram- 
atist exhibited. They affected him, they influenced him 
to an extent of which he was hardly conscious, and 
which at a later period he was little disposed to acknowl- 
edge. He was willing, at least at first, to pardon much 
that Shakespeare did, on account of that assumed rude 
and unpolished age in which he flouiished. If as you 
say, he wrote to Bolingbroke, you do not possess a 
single good tragedj^ there are nevertheless some most 
admirable scenes in those wild pieces which go under 
that name. While, therefore, Voltaire could not approve 
the barbarous irregularities with which the play of 
'Julius Csesar,' for illustration, abounds, he told the 
man he was addressing that he was only astounded that 
there were not more irregularities in pieces produced in 
an age of ignorance by a writer who did not understand 
Latin, and who had no instructor but his own genius. 
These pieces lacked indeed the correctness, the purity, 
the elegance, for which the French stage was dis- 
tinguished. But however deficient in taste, they un- 
mistakably possessed power. They held the attention, 
they stirred the heart. This was what Voltaire said 
then. Long afterward, when his criticism of Shake- 
speare had begun to assume a peculiarly depreciatory 
tone, he did not refuse to acknowledge the strength 

10 



VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 

that lay in these dramas, bizarre and savage as he both 
deemed and termed them. "I have seen ' Julius Csesar' 
played," he wrote in 1764, " and I confess that from 
the first scene, when I heard the tribunes reproaching 
the Roman populace for its ingratitude to Pompey and 
its attachment to Pompey's conqueror, I began to be 
interested, to be excited. I did not see afterwards 
any conspirators upon the stage who did not arouse my 
curiosity ; and in spite of the large number of its absurd 
improprieties, I felt that the piece impressed me." ^ 

No student of Voltaire's life needs to be told of the 
profound influence which his residence in England ex- 
ercised over his later activities, both literary and polit- 
ical. The account he gives of his experiences there is 
not indeed to be always received with the trusting faith 
we exhibit towards a divine revelation. He was never 
a man to spoil a good story by insisting upon a slavish 
adherence to inconvenient details merely because they 
happened to be true. Accuracy, if it conflicted with 
an effect he was aiming to produce, was treated by 
him with more than indifference ; he had for it what 
may be termed a fine scorn. Doubtless he would always 
have preferred to have his facts just as he said they 
were ; but if they were not, it was their misfortune, not 
his. It was his business to be interesting ; and if interest 
was lacking in the events he narrated, he was ready 
to supply it from his own inexhaustible invention. The 
danger under which we all lie is to accept Voltaire's 
account of a given occasion, or of anything in a given 

1 Observations sur le Jules Cesar de Shakespeare in Commentaires sur 
Corneillt. 

11 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

work, as an exact relation of what was then done or 
there said. 

In the edition of Voltaire's complete writings which 
was brought out a few years after his death — the one 
published at Kehl — there appeared among the mis- 
cellanies a short piece in the form of a letter.^ It 
purported to give an account of his first experiences in 
England. It was assigned by the editors to 1727, the 
year after his arrival in that country. As it ojDens with 
an account of some views which he had been reading in 
a work of Dennis's, it must have been written some 
time after he had become reasonably familiar with the 
language. It is an interesting and brilliant description 
of the scenes he saw, or said he saw, upon his first 
landing, which, according to the account here given, was 
at Greenwich. Everything was bright and animated. 
The weather was delightful ; the sky was without a 
cloud ; a gentle west wind added to the happiness of 
every one ; for it appears from his description to have 
been the day of the fair. He met in the crowd some 
men of business to whom he had letters of introduction. 
They were exceedingly cordial ; they put themselves 
out in every way to contribute to his enjoyment. He 
was transported with pleasure at everything which he 
saw and in which he took part. So passed the first 
day. 

On the day follomng he met at an ill-appointed, 
ill-managed coffee-house the same men, who were no lon- 
ger the same men. They scarcely recognized his exist- 
ence. He could hardly get from any one of them 

1 Vol. xlix. pp. 10-21 (1785). It is headed simply " A. M. . . ." 

12 



VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 

anything more than the monosyllabic yes or no. As 
he could not recall a single thing he had said or done 
which could properly give them offence, he tried to dis- 
cover the reason of this strange behavior. From one of 
them he wrung at last the all-sufficient reply, " The 
wind is in the east." Pretty soon a person came in who 
informed the assembled company with a good deal of 
indifference that a woman of their acquaintance, young, 
beautiful, and rich, and just on the point of being hap- 
pily married, had been found dead in her chamber by 
her lover. She had cut her throat with a razor. 
Her friends who heard the news received it with the 
same indifference as had been exhibited by the friend 
who had communicated it. The single inquiry made 
was about the lover. What had become of him ? " He 
has bought the razor," said coldly one of the company. 

Voltaire discovered that the strange conduct of the 
men, the suicide of a happy girl were due to the one 
single fact that the wind was in the east. This account 
of events was supplemented by a number of similar 
details and observations written to harmonize with the 
prepossessions and beliefs existing on the Continent as 
to the character of the English. It requires a faith 
capable of removing mountains to believe that man}^ 
of the incidents narrated ever took place, or could 
have taken place. The very fact that this epistle 
was not printed in Voltaire's lifetime seems to indicate 
that he regarded its publication as too much of a tax 
upon human credulity, if not upon English patience. 
At all events it was clearly an impression he was seek- 
ing to convey by it, not a recital of occurrences he was 

13 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

setting out to give. As a circumstantial account of 
what really happened, one might as well go the ' ^Eneid ' 
for an exact picture of what took place at the founding 
of Carthage. This portrayal of English sentiment and 
behavior constitutes, with its striking and in many 
instances impossible incidents, an entertaining story, 
entertainingly told. But there is about it nothing so 
amusing as the way in which it has been taken. It has 
been treated as veritable history. Its details have been 
carefully scrutinized; its errors have been solemnly 
pointed out. 

As long as Voltaire was disposed to embellish his 
own experiences for the sake of making a good story, 
he in one sense had no right to complain that others 
would deal in extravagant fictions about him in turn. 
Only, his were pleasant inventions, and little calculated 
to deceive. Those of which he was made the subject 
were often malignant. After he had succeeded in 
shocking the religious sentiment of his time, more es- 
pecially after he had cowed the persecuting rage of 
religious bigotry, there was little limit to the fabrica- 
tions that went on of false statements about his life and 
actions. There is no mendacity more unscrupulous 
than that which sets out to calumniate those whom its 
utterers choose to deem the enemies of God. France 
furnished many baseless stories about Voltaire's con- 
duct and career ; but in meanness they were fully 
equalled by the smaller crop which sprang up in Eng- 
land. There too they were fathered by dignitaries of 
the church, and were spread far and wide by the agency 
of professed moralists. The most widely circulated of 

14 



VOLTAIRE IN ENGLAND 

them is the stoiy that Voltaire, the cultivated and 
polished mau of the world, indulged in conversation so 
gross, when dining with Pope, that the poet's mother 
was obliged to leave the room. For the origin of this 
absurdest of stories Warburton seems to have been 
remotely responsible, but its extensive currency has 
been due to Dr. Johnson. Another is that he, the 
intimate personal friend of Bolingbroke, played the 
part of a spy upon that nobleman in the interests of 
the English ministry. Long after all the parties were in 
their graves, another peculiarly ridiculous falsehood was 
evolved by an anonymous slanderer. It represented 
Voltaire as having defrauded deliberately and in a spe- 
cially mean way his friend, the Earl of Peterborough ; 
and in order to escape the wrath of the justly incensed 
nobleman, eager to kill him, as having fled precipitately 
to his own country.^ 

These lies correspond closely to Prince Hal's descrip- 
tion of Falstaff's : they are gross as a mountain, open, 
palpable. Voltaire had plenty of faults. Many of 
them will be constantly displayed in the course of this 
volume. In trickiness he was in certain ways unrivalled. 
In the war which he waged in behalf of freedom of 
thought he was forced to resort to crafty devices of all 
kinds to foil the efforts of those determined to prevent 
the circulation of his writings. When it came to the 
denial of tlie authorship of his owii works, rarely has 
there been found a more versatile and intrepid liar. 
No criminal ever appeared under more aliases. But 

1 For a full account of these stories, see Ballantyne's valuable " Vol- 
taire's Visit to England" (1893), pp. 74-86, and pp. 231-234. 

15 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

stories such as those just mentioned, lack that decent 
degree of probability which belongs to the most extrav- 
agant fiction. The acts recorded are senseless and 
motiveless. We are asked to believe that the most 
brilliant man of letters of his time, who associated 
during his whole life with the highest and most 
refined society of all lands, was not only guilty of vio- 
lating the decencies of ordinary behavior, but in addi- 
tion could descend to the practices of a common 
cheat. This of itself is hard enough to accept ; it may 
be granted that it is not actually impossible. We are 
further asked to believe that in so doing he acted the 
part of an unconscionable fool. There is a point at 
which credulity stops. 



16 



CHAPTER II 

Voltaire's knowledge of English literature 

Accuracy is a very useful quality in a writer, but 
it never tends of itself to make him interesting. In the 
equipment of a man of genius, it is at best but a virtue 
of secondary importance. In works of imagination who 
but a pedant cares whether facts have been misstated, 
whether chronology has been defied, whether the manners 
of one age have been transferred to those of another? 
It is the truth of life at which the great artist aims, not 
at the truth of detail. Furthermore, if the man of 
genius be a very prolific author, accuracy is for him a 
simple impossibility. That demands leisure and vigi- 
lance and painstaking on matters of minor importance. 
The time and toil necessary to secure it are wasted in 
the case of him who aims at results which are inde- 
pendent" of any consonance with the actual course of 
events. What he gains on one side he loses on the 
other. If the mistakes of the man of genius are of im- 
portance in themselves, it becomes the duty of the 
humble gleaner who follows in his footsteps to point 
out things as they were, and not as in the glowing 
imagination of the writer they were supposed to be ; to 
correct the errors arising from carelessness or ignorance, 
or to indicate the artistic skill which can overleap the 
2 17 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

restraints of fact in order to produce thereby a pro- 
founder impression. 

It lias been intimated in the preceding chapter that 
Voltaire never concerned himself about exactness in the 
details of any story which he sought to make interesting. 
This is not brought against him as a reproach. Like 
all men of genius, he had many qualities far higher 
than accuracy. How indeed could he have been accu- 
rate ? How could a writer who treated of almost every 
topic in which the human race is interested expect to 
be correct in every little detail ? Here was a man whose 
life was spent in bringing beliefs of all sorts to the bar 
of reason ; who was fighting continuously against time- 
honored abuses in church and state ; who was constantly 
engaged in promulgating new views on every subject, or 
new ways of looking at old views ; who, further, in the 
midst of these occupations, was throwing off year after 
year poems, plays, tales, treatises without number, besides 
carrying on an immense correspondence with persons in 
every grade of society, ranging from crowned heads to 
the humble friends of his youth. How could such a 
person find the leisure to master the petty details which 
are necessary to make his statements accord with precise 
fact? What time had he at his command to spend in 
verifying dates, establishing exactness of quotation, jus- 
tifying correctness of assertion? This may not have 
been the view he took of himself and of his statements : 
but it must be the view of his advocates. For his vin- 
dication they must rely upon the truth of his general- 
ities, not upon the truth of his details. 

Not only did Voltaire, in the multifarious activities 

18 



VOLTAIRE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 

of his life, have no leisure to attain accuracy, he may 
almost be said to have felt, if not a contempt for it, a 
contempt for its importance. It would be unjust to say 
that he looked upon it with detestation whenever regard 
for it interfered with any impression he was trying to 
produce ; but he certainly did witli indifference. He 
assuredly never considered how much it costs to tell 
the truth. As he had not the leisure, so he had not the 
disposition to spend much time in securing a product 
which struck him as in many respects of comparatively 
little value. He could never have been made a convert 
to the modern doctrine, sometimes taught as a theory, 
more often exemplified in practice, that in order to have 
history accurate, it must be rendered stupid. Strive for 
such a result as best he might, Voltaire could never 
have been dull. But along with dulness he neglected 
certain other things. Without doubt he honestly be- 
lieved at times that he was engaged in making laborious 
researches ; but nothing could have been less to his 
taste than the Dryasdust method which painfully per- 
plexes itself about exactness of dates and faithful 
representation of events. This he would have charac- 
terized as belonging to the letter which killeth, and not 
to the spirit which maketh alive. 

It is not unjust to impute to him this feeling, for 
he avowed it himself. In the article on Dante in his 
' Philosophical Dictionary,' he observed that Bayle had 
made a mistake of five j^ears in the date of the poet's 
birth. He had put it down as 1260 ; he should have 
said 1265. The correction was made, not as one might 
naturally suppose, in order to guard the reader against 

19 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

error, or to censure the biographer for carelessness. On 
the contrary, he referred to it to point out how utterly un- 
important the error was, and to convey an implied censure 
upon those who looked upon it as of any consequence 
and found fault with the writer for committing it. A 
little variation of five years in the date of a man's birth 
is the merest bagatelle, so long as one's eyes are fixed 
on higher objects. " The great thing," was Voltaire's 
comment, " is not to mistake either in point of taste or 
in point of argument." This disposition to look on the 
anxiety to be accurate as a low and grovelling ambition 
which tended to fasten the eyes of the spirit upon the 
earth, was shared by his followers and admirers in all 
countries. We are told with approval by an Enghsh 
reviewer of the contemptuous smile which Voltaire 
bestowed upon an informant who pointed out to him 
that he had transferred the date of a battle to another 
j^ear from that in which it actually took place. " These 
minute details," remarked the critic, "these labors of 
little minds, are only important when magnified by 
dulness." ^ 

In a large share of the matters which engaged Vol- 
taire's attention, and upon which his reputation still 
rests, correctness of statement was of little account. 
He is not to be blamed for his unwillingness to sacrifice 
to it results far greater. A man whose ideas were 
sapping creeds, disintegrating ancient beliefs, under- 
mining the tyranny of political dogmas, could not be 
expected to subject himself to the tyranny of fact. But 
though in works of the imagination, accuracy is the 

1 Critical Review, vdI. Ix. p. 239. 
20 



VOLTAIRE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 

least of virtues, and if higher things are subordinated 
to it, tends to become a positive vice, it plays, after all, 
a part of some importance in those humbler efforts of 
the mind which deal with the relation of events. In 
certain fields of investigation there has been and always 
will remain a prejudice in its favor. It is felt to be 
desirable in historical investigation. It imparts also an 
element of fairness, and sometimes of conclusiveness, 
to controversial discussion. The indifference which 
Voltaire frequently displayed to it justifies us in taking 
a furtlier step. We can say that he never made himself 
a slavish adherent to fact, when not simply higher ends, 
but also his own ends, could be better subserved by a 
liberal intermingling of fiction. There were in his mind 
two predominant feelings. One was to be entertaining ; 
and rarely has man succeeded better. The other was 
to enforce the triumph of his own views ; and it seemed 
at times to have been to him a matter of indifference 
how he did it, provided he did it. Misrepresentation, 
misquotation, perversion of meaning were perfectly jus- 
tifiable, if more satisfactory agencies failed to accomplish 
what he wished. This is true at all events in the case 
of Shakespeare. In regard to him there is scarcely a 
method of conveying a wrong impression, from sup- 
pression of the truth to intentional falsification, to 
wliich Voltaire did not occasionally resort. Unques- 
tionably his misstatements arose sometimes from care- 
lessness, sometimes from ignorance, sometimes from 
that recklessness of assertion which prefers to hazard 
any misrepresentation, however gross, to undergoing any 
toil of verification, however slight. But there are in- 

21 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

stances in which no investigator can escape the convic- 
tion that Voltaire deliberately determined to deceive 
readers who were utterly ignorant, or at least more 
ignorant than himself. ' 

To many this view of Voltaire may be a surprise, 
and to some it will seem unwarranted. It is certainly 
a serious imputation upon the character of a man of 
genius, and the reader has a right to demand something 
besides assertion. Yet we need not limit this charge 
of untrust worthiness to what is said by him about 
Shakespeare. To some extent it pervades numerous 
statements of his about English history and English 
literature. It is not meant to imply by this that he 
did not say many true things ; only, in no case can we 
accept a thing as true solely because Voltaire said it. 
His unsupported testimony is never to be relied upon 
implicitly. Of matters he knew little or nothing 
about he talked with a confidence so assured that it 
frequently staggers belief to find how absolutely with- 
out foundation his assertions are. In a few cases the 
blunders committed are apparently so without cause 
or provocation that they seem the outcome of a per- 
versity which was determined to be wrong when it 
might just as well have been right. As a sort of 
preliminary study for testing the trustworthiness of his 
statements about Shakespeare and his writings, let us 
turn to what he says of other persons and other works 
in the departments of English history and literature. 
Take in the first place, the account of Cromwell, which, 
previously printed, was embodied at last in his ' Philo- 
sophical Dictionary.' It is an article which can be 

22 



VOLTAIRE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 

studied with peculiar satisfaction, for its perusal im- 
parts to the reader that peace of mind which arises 
from the certainty of conviction that the author is inva- 
riably and unqualifiedly wrong, wherever the slightest 
opportunity is furnished to be wrong. 

From the veracious account Voltaire gives us we 
learn that Cromwell was originally in doubt whether 
he shoukl become a churcliman or a soldier; that in 
1622 he made a campaign with Frederick Henry, Prince 
of Orange; that on returning to England he entered 
as chaplain into the service of Bishop Williams, who 
in turn was thought to be too intimate with Cromwell's 
wife ; and that finally he was banished from the bishop's 
famil}^ on account of his extreme puritanical opinions. 
So much for the earlier period of his life. Later, after 
the English parliament had declared war against royalty 
and episcopacy, we are informed that he was chosen for 
a borough through the agency of some of his friends ; 
that he began his military career as a soldier of fortune 
in the city of Hull, then besieged by the king; that 
there he so distinguished himself that he was rewarded 
by parliament with a donation which was equivalent 
in value to six thousand francs ; that he was then made 
colonel, and in consequence of his ability and success 
rose rapidly to the highest rank ; but that while in the 
midst of this cruel war he was also engaged in makiug 
love to the wife of Major-general Lambert, and having 
captured the Earl of Holland, who was more acceptaljle 
to that lady than he was liimsclf, he had the sujDreme 
satisfaction of cutting off his rival's head. 

Such an account as this of one of the greatest soldiers 

23 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

and statesmen of his time ought to prevent the least 
feeling of surprise at any remark made by Voltaire which 
may turn up in the course of the following pages. The 
mine of misinformation in which he delved, in order 
to produce this essay, furnished him still more ore of a 
similar character; but on the whole, the nuggets here 
given are the choicest that can be readily exposed to 
view. A puzzling question presents itself to the reader 
who is familiar with merely the ordinary facts in the 
life of Cromwell. From what possible quarter could 
this dreadful trash have been derived? It is the 
source of it which excites curiosity ; there can hardly 
be any other feeling than that of amusement at the 
malice which engendered it, and at the credulity which 
could ever have accepted it as truth. No penny-a-liner 
ever concocted from stories floating about ale-houses 
a more ridiculous lot of rubbish than was here picked 
up and handed down to posterity by the most brilliant 
writer of his time, who was celebrated far and wide 
as a great historian. The gossip of stable-boys sitting 
about cavalier camp-fires would be authority entitled to 
respect compared witli this precious farrago of lies which 
Voltaire raked up from forgotten dungheaps of calumny 
and palmed off upon his confiding contemporaries as 
a veritable account of the life of one of the greatest 
men of the preceding century. Upon his contempo- 
raries of the Continent; not upon Englishmen. Even 
in those days, when Cromwell's character and motives 
were most misunderstood and maligned, these state- 
ments were too much for his English translator, who 
avowed his inability to point out the source from which 

24 



VOLTAIRE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 

they came. Voltaire never troubled himself to correct 
them, even if he ever entertained a suspicion of their 
groundlessness. In truth, the worst thing to be said 
about this essay is that he undoubtedly believed him- 
self what he put in it. 

So much for English history. More germane to this 
particular investigation is the accuracy Qf Voltaire's 
reports about English literature. In regard to his 
knowledge of that subject many extravagant assertions 
have been made and still continue to be made. The 
mention by him of an English book seems to some to 
presuppose his familiarity with its contents. As a 
matter of fact, it not unfrequently implies little knowl- 
edge of it and sometimes none at all. He was not averse 
to talking in a confident way about works upon which, 
it can be proved almost to a demonstration, he had 
never set his eyes. This at least is the charitable way 
of looking at it ; for if he saw them, what he said about 
them, instead of being imputed to ignorance, must be 
ascribed to deliberate misrepresentation to suit his own 
ends. It is not derogatory to Voltaire's genius to insist 
that his acquaintance with English literature has been 
vastly overrated. He is great enough in his own right 
without being credited with attainments he did not and 
could not possess. On the other hand, care must be 
taken not to underrate his actual acquirements from 
the gross errors he occasionally made. We can there- 
fore say generally that, during the limited period he 
remained in England, he accomplished far more than 
exceedingly able men, equally diligent, would hare done 
in twice or thrice the length of time ; for his curiosity 

25 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

was omnivorous and his powers of application and re- 
tention wonderful. It was while in exile that he 
naturally learned most that he knew of the English 
literature of the past ; and to that our observations 
shall mainl}^ be confined. 

It is literature pure and simple of which we are here 
speaking. There are productions outside of its domain 
which Voltaire knew or knew about, such as the sci- 
entific and philosophical works of Newton, Locke, 
Clarke, and Berkeley ; the sermons of Tillotson ; and, 
further, the wu^itings of deistical authors like Woolston, 
Toland, Collins, and many others. With these last his 
acquaintance could be assumed, even had he never 
mentioned their names. Their sentiments were his 
sentiments ; and he always professed envy at the freedom 
of utterance — looking to us very little like freedom — 
which was accorded to such writers in England and 
denied them in France. At a later period it gave him a 
malicious pleasure to reckon in this class Bishop War- 
burton, on account of his effort to establish the divinity 
of the mission of Moses not because that law-giver taught, 
but because he did not teach the doctrine of the im- 
mortality of the soul. But in the case of literature, 
strictly so called, his acquaintance lay mainly with the 
writings which were most in vogue in England at the 
time he was there resident — especially with those which 
were read and talked about in the circles in which he 
mainly moved. Consequently it was with the authors 
who followed the era of the Restoration that he was 
really familiar. 

The writers strictly dramatic will be mentioned else- 

26 



VOLTAIRE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 

where. Throwing such out of view, more or less fre- 
quent references appear in his pages to Dryden, Butler, 
Rochester, Roscommon, Dorset, Buckingham, Addison, 
(nirtli, and Prior. In the case of four of these — Dryden, 
Rochester, Butler, and Addison — he gave translations 
of certain passages. But his highest praise was re- 
served for his immediate contemporaries with whom he 
came in personal contact. Of Thomson indeed he 
•thought none too well ; but of the two greatest Eng- 
lish authors then living he expressed strong and unques- 
tionably sincere admiration. He preferred Swift to 
Rabelais, and found, what few have done, that his 
poetical numbers are of a singular and almost inimitable 
taste. But for Pope he reserved his warmest eulogiums. 
In his opinion he was the most elegant, the most correct, 
and the most harmonious poet to whom England had 
ever given birth. At a later period he asserted that 
the ' Essay on Man ' was the finest, the most useful, 
and the most sublime didactic poem that had ever been 
written in any language. 

Foreign opinion is frequently spoken of as giving 
something of the view of a contemporary which will be 
taken by posterity. IP Voltaire is to be regarded as a 
representative of the spirit which foresees the future, 
never has prophetic announcement of this sort had more 
inadequate fulfilment. We may ascribe it to better or 
to worse taste on our own part, as we choose ; but a 
good deal that he admired has long been reckoned by 
most men as being at best simply endurable. His 
critical appreciation gave high praise to productions 
which have not only dropped now out of sight of almost 

27 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

everybody save the special student of literature, but 
even at the time were rarely reckoned equal to works 
which he either undervalued or praised half-heartedly. 
Out of deference to contemporary opinion he conceded 
a somewhat reluctant tribute of commendation to that 
belated Elizabethan, Milton, who had just then entered 
upon the fulness of his fame. But whatever was his 
real opinion of ' Paradise Lost,' he expressed little 
respect for ' Paradise Regained ' or for ' Samson ■ 
Agonistes.' On the other hand he spoke with genuine 
enthusiasm of ' Hudibras,' which to most of even well- 
educated men is at present little more than a name. 
With the same feelings he read ' The Dispensary ' of 
Garth, which is now hardly so much as a name. He 
found the Earl of Rochester to be a man of genius and a 
great poet. He declared that Addison's ' Campaign,' 
now preserved only by two of its lines, was a more 
durable monument to the victory of Blenheim than the 
castle which bears that name. All these and others 
such as Prior's •■ Alma ' and Philips' ' Splendid Shilling ' 
were a good deal talked about, while he was in England, 
whether read little or much. It was natural that he 
should become interested in them, though loss of crit- 
ical insight on his part seems unnecessary. Still, if the 
admiration which he expressed for certain of them 
strikes us as disproportionate, we must remember that 
they were written in the taste of the time, and that 
taste had been largely formed under the influence of 
French models. They suited Voltaire, because they 
belonged to the kind of literature which he had been 
brought up to admire. 

28 



VOLTAIRE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 

But the moment we go back of the era of the Res- 
toration English literature was to Voltaire largely a 
sealed book. Of the earliest authors he naturally knew 
nothing ; it was an ignorance he shared with nearly all 
the inhabitants of the country. With Denham and 
Waller, who had lasted over from the Civil War into the 
era of the Restoration, he had the customary familiarity 
of the period. Certain of their poems, or certain pas- 
sages of them, still retained a feeble literary vitality : 
and from the latter, for whom he professed great 
respect, he translated a passage. Cowley was histor- 
ically in the same situation ; but it is one of the proofs 
of the decline which had now overtaken his once wide- 
spread fame that Voltaire, who knew his name, did not 
find it really necessary to know his works. In fact 
there is nothing more striking about the comments of 
the French writer on many English authors than their 
thoroughly conventional character. Nearly all of them, 
great or small, flit through his pages. Their names 
occur ; but in many, perhaps most instances, there is 
no display of that independent judgment which denotes 
actual acquaintance. He said of them just what every 
one was then saying. He made no pretence that he 
was familiar with Spenser. His own countrymen, he 
told us, esteemed him ; but no one was able to read 
him. The only two of the Elizabethans whom he knew 
were Bacon and Shakespeare. Not that lie himself made 
any such assertion of ignorance or gave any such im- 
pression. On the contrary, he assumed at times a 
familiarity with writers and writings of this period 
and did it with so much assurance, that it not only 

29 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

imposed upon his contemporaries, but has largely imposed 
upon men who came long after. That this statement is 
not too strongly put, let us consider two instances in 
which he made excursions into the Elizabethan period. 

In 1752 Voltaire published his tragedy of Rome 
Sauvee. To it he furnished a preface in which he 
remarked that while the learned would not meet 
with a faithful narrative of Catiline's conspiracy — ■ since 
a tragedy is not a history, — they would see a true 
picture of the manners of the times, and an accurate 
representation of the genius and character of the lead- 
ing personages of the drama. That in the play he had 
an eye on Shakespeare is noticeable, though it has pos- 
sibly not been noticed. In ' Julius Csesar ' the wife of 
Brutus, though occupying but a subordinate part, plays 
a somewhat striking role. It attracted Voltaire's atten- 
tion, and against her and her relations to her husband 
he sought to raise a rival. He found one in Aurelia 
Orestilla, the wife of Catiline. But in his tragedy she 
is no beautiful but disreputable character, such as she 
has been handed down in history ; on the contrary, 
she is the daughter of a. noble and high-minded Roman, 
and is herself a woman of lofty spirit, devoted to her 
father, to her country, and to her husband. So far she 
is like Brutus's Portia. With her, Catiline is repre- 
sented as being deeply in love. Her influence, however, 
is not sufficient to deter him from continuing his career 
of crime and treason. It does not even keep him from 
murdering her own father, Nonnius, when he finds that 
deed essential to the success of his plans. Yet this 
desperate and remorseless reprobate is completely over- 

30 



VOLTAIRE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 

coino when she indignantly turns upon liiui in the senate- 
house, and before proceeding to take her owii life, 
denounces him for the murder of her father and for his 
treason to his country. Voltaire was certainly faithful 
to his idea of not making his work a transcript of an}' 
real history. We may further be permitted to doubt the 
accuracy of his representation of the characters he 
portrayed. 

In this play too we find strikingly exemplified his 
treatment of rules he professed to regard as sacred. 
There was never a louder asserter of the inviolability 
of the doctrine of the unities than Voltaire. The dis- 
regard of it by Shakespeare was one of the chief indict- 
ments he brought against his art as a dramatist. For 
it he was constantly held up to reprobation as the 
barbarous author of a barbarous age. Nothing was 
dearer to Voltaire in theory than these fundamental laws 
of the drama, as he termed them. Yet no one ever 
violated their spirit more ruthlessly while paying alle- 
giance to them in words. Of the numerous fraudulent 
evasions of them which he perpetrated, one of the 
worst examples is this very play of Borne Sauvec. 
Twenty-four hours constitute the theoretical limits of 
the action. As usual, not a word is found to indicate 
their passage; but the number of events that occur 
in this one day is astounding. In these twenty-four 
hours we have, taking place at various times, several 
meetings of the conspirators ; several interviews between 
Aurelia and Catiline ; an interview between Cicero and 
Catiline ; an interview between Ctesar and Catiline ; the 
planning and the carrying into effect of the assassination 

31 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

of Nonnius ; a meeting of the senate, with the violent 
debate which goes on in that body ; the self-destruction 
of Aurelia ; the enforced departure of Catiline from the 
city with the intent of making war; the detection 
and execution of his confederates ; the charge of com- 
plicity in the plot brought against Csesar ; the departure 
of that leader to the scene of conflict ; and finally the 
play closes with his return from the field of battle with 
the announcement of the defeat and death of Catiline, 
and with it the crushing of the conspiracy. We are 
not concerned with tlie numerous violations of historic 
fact here found. Rome may have been saved in the 
manner Voltaire described ; but the unities certainly 
were not. 

Furthermore, in the preface to this play Voltaire made 
remarks which manifested to his countrymen his posses- 
sion of a knowledge that has been denied him here. He 
told us that the English, who hazard everything without 
knowing what they hazard, had given us a play on the 
subject of Catiline's conspiracy. It was the work of Ben 
Jonson. This observation would seem to indicate Vol- 
taire's acquaintance with other of the Elizabethan 
dramatists than Shakespeare. It certainly suggests the 
existence of such knowledge; as a matter of fact it 
proves its non-existence. He went on to tell us that 
Jonson had made no scruple of translating seven or eight 
pages of Cicero's oration against Catiline. He had in 
addition translated them in prose, not imagining it 
possible to make Cicero speak in verse. This shocking 
procedure was perhaps no more than could reasonably 
be expected from such a man in such a period. " To 

32 



VOLTAIRE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 

say the truth," he continued, " the consul's prose, 
mingled with the verse of the other characters, forms a 
contrast worthy of the barbarous age of Ben Jonson." 

The first comment that it is incumbent to make upon 
this very positive statement is that in Ben Jonsun's 
play of ' Catiline ' Cicero never once speaks in prose. 
Throughout the whole play he does the most talking of 
any of the characters, but he talks invariably in blank 
verse, save in two or three places where for a few lines 
he uses ryme instead. Jonson's version of the passages 
he took from the Catiline oration extends to about three 
hundred lines. It is a most elaborate piece of work. 
He prided himself upon it — a feeling in which few 
since have been found to share. Both the audiences of 
his own day and readers of later times have usually 
derived as little enjoyment from his version of Cicero's 
speech, as Catiline himself probably did from the 
original. So much for the accuracy of Voltaire's com- 
ment upon this particular portion of the play. But 
this is not the only display of ignorance. There is not 
to be found anywhere in it that mingling of prose and 
verse which had been censured as denoting the barbar- 
ous age in which it was produced. Such a proceeding 
in tragedy would have been as distasteful to Ben Jonson 
himself as to Voltaire. It never occurred to the latter 
that the former had preceded him in many of his views 
as much as he did in time. From beginning to end of 
his play of ' Catiline ' there is not a single sentence in 
prose. With the exception of the lyric choruses and 
the few lines of ryme just mentioned, the whole of the 
piece is in blank verse. 

3 33 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

As in the previous case of Cromwell, the puzzling 
question arises as to the quarter from which Voltaire 
derived these statements. The acquaintance he pro- 
fessed with the tragedy was clearly not based upon any 
examination of the original. The only source from 
which he appears to have got his knowledge of it was 
from the version of La Place. This was contained in 
his work upon the English theatre whicli had been 
published a few years before the production of Rome 
Sauvee. By him ' Catiline ' had been pretty fully trans- 
lated.^ But the perplexing thing is that it had been 
translated entirely in prose. Even the lyric portions had 
been so rendered. Not a line of it uttered by a single 
one of the characters had been given in verse. Where, 
then, did Voltaire get his notion that Cicero spoke in 
prose in this piece, and the other characters in verse ? 
The only plausible explanation seems to be that he 
evolved it from his own imagination or invention. One 
is led the more readily to accept this view of its origin 
from the way he dealt with the further work that comes 
here under consideration. In the remarks on Ben 
Jonson we have the sort of knowledge of Shakespeare's 
contemporaries which Voltaire exhibited in middle life. 
Later he was able to extend to Shakespeare's prede- 
cessors this peculiar kind of information which he 
possessed. The growth of his familiarity with early 
English literature has been pointed to with pride by his 
admirers. Striking evidence of his continued interest 
in the subject was evinced, we are told, in the course of 
the war he carried on against Le Tourneur's translation 

1 Le Theatre Anglois, vol. v. pp. 1-188 (1747). 
34 



VOLTAIRE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 

of Shakespeare. During it Voltaire sought to emphasize 
the representations of scenes of violence and bloodshed 
which characterized the English drama, especially that 
of the Elizabethan age. For this purpose he gave an 
account of the tragedy of ' Gorboduc' 

It was not altogetlier a happy selection. There were 
far worse plays than ' Gorboduc ' which would have 
served his purposes far better. If it be said that while 
this may be true, Voltaire did not know of them and 
could hardly be expected to know of them, the answer 
is easy, that he knew as much of them as he did of the 
piece he criticised. Its unsatisfactoriness for his pur- 
pose consists in the fact that while a good deal of 
bloodshedding goes on in ' Gorboduc,' never once does 
it occur upon the stage. The horror which, according 
to French critics, exists in it, belongs to the narration ; 
it is never once brought to the observation. There is an 
ample amount of slaughter indicated ; but the spectator 
never witnesses it. He invariably hears of it from some 
messenger. Voltaire unquestionably assumed that the 
various deaths recounted took place upon the stage, and 
that the audience were regaled by the dying agonies of 
the victims. On the contrary, it was its careful absten- 
tion from the actual representation of deeds of violence, 
its preference of declamation to action, which had re- 
commended this tragedy to the adherents of the school 
which looked with disdain upon the productions of the 
irregular and lawless contemporary drama, and desired 
to substitute for them plays that should be in accord 
with the practice of the ancients. 

' Gorboduc,' like many other works of the early 

35 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

English stage, will be read with pleasure mainly by those 
whose tastes are antiquarian rather than literary. It is 
formed upon the Senecan model, though the unities of 
time and place are disregarded. There are lyric 
choruses between the acts, and very protracted speeches 
during the course of them. The work will always have, 
however, a certain importance in the history of English 
literature, as both its first tragedy and its first drama in 
blank verse. The contemporary interest attaching to 
it, the contemporary success, whatever it was, that 
attended it, was largely due to the fact that it was a 
political pamphlet in the guise of a play.^ The dis- 
tresses, commotions, civil wars, and deaths depicted in it 
were introduced for the sake of pointing out the dangers 
and miseries awaiting a land where the succession to 
the throne is unsettled. It was for this that details of 
massacre and murder were brought to the attention, 
though not to the sight. Voltaire is not to be blamed 
for knowing nothing of this. What is objectionable is 
the attempt on his part to impose upon an uninformed 
audience an untrue account of a play with which he was 
himself unacquainted. Readers of ' Gorboduc ' were not 
then and are not found by the million amoilg the men 
who use the speech in which it is written. In France 
at any time, and more especially at that time, there 
were hardly any at all. Voltaire could rely upon a 
general ignorance among his countrymen as dense as 
his own. It is accordingly a matter of some interest to 
contrast his account of the incidents of the play with 

1 See L. H. Courtney's article in ' Notes and Queries,' Series II. vol. x. 
pp. 261-263. 

36 



VOLTAIRE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 

what is represented in it as actually happening. His 
successive sentences will be quoted exactly : the facts 
as they are will follow. 

"There was," he said, " a good king, husband of a 
good queen. In the first act they divided their realm 
between two children who quarrelled about this divi- 
sion." The use of the plural pronoun is here objection- 
able. They did not divide ; it was the king who divided, 
much to the grief and indignation of the queen, who 
wished the elder to be sole ruler of the realm. Nor did 
the brothers quarrel in the first act ; Porrex, the younger, 
did not appear in it at all. They never in fact met on 
the stage during the course of the play. " The younger 
son," continues Voltaire, " gave the elder a box on the 
ear in the second act." This is an event which — as is 
evident from their never meeting — did not happen in 
the representation ; nor is there the slightest sugges- 
tion in the tragedy that anything of the kind had ever 
happened. In this second act they were both in their 
respective kingdoms, and preparing to wage war upon 
each other. " In the thii-d act," saj^s the critic, " the 
elder killed the younger." This is reasonably accurate 
for Voltaire ; the only correction needed is that it was 
the younger brother who killed the elder. The news of 
the deed was brought to the court by a messenger. 
"• The mother in the fourth act killed the elder son," 
goes on this faithful report. Necessarily he could not 
have been killed twice ; it was the younger son that met 
that fate at the hands of the queen. " In the fifth act," 
says Voltaire, " the king killed the queen Gorboduc, 
and the people,.having risen in rebellion, killed the king 

37 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

Gorboduc. As a result there was no one left at the 
conclusion." In his report of the play Voltaire gave 
the same name to husband and wife. In the play itself 
the queen's name is Videna. She was not killed by her 
husband. Along with him she was slain by the popu- 
lace. The fact and the manner of the double death were 
announced in the half-dozen opening lines of the fifth 
act. Necessarily the murder of the king and queen did 
not form the conclusion of the tragedy, as Voltaire's 
words imply. So far from there being no one left to 
carry on the play, there were half a dozen characters 
who appeared in the final act and were alive at the end. 
One of them indeed was very much alive. He con- 
cluded the piece with a discourse going well on towards 
two hundred lines. 

The question arises, Where did Voltaire get this 
account of the play? He could never have seen a 
copy of it, though it had been reprinted in 1736, and 
again in Dodsley's collection of 1744. At least, if he 
saw one, he never impi'oved the opportunity to make its 
fui-ther acquaintance. He could never even have read 
the argument prefixed to the tragedy, for this gave an 
outline of the plot. The slightest perusal of it would 
have saved him from committing the blunders of which 
he was guilty, even had he not troubled himself to read 
the piece. In this instance we can trace the origin of 
the ridiculous description which he gave. He was in the 
habit of sneering at Dennis, of whom he knew little but 
what Pope and his friends told him. He was well ac- 
quainted, however, with the attack upon Shakespeare 
which had been made by Dennis's contemporary, Rymer, 

38 



VOLTAIRE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE 

about whom men are now unable to decide whether he 
succeeded in making his criticism wretcheder than his 
poetry, or his poetry wretcheder than his criticism. 
More than once he referred with ill -concealed glee to the 
passage in which that writer had declared that there was 
not a monkey but understood nature better than Shake- 
speare, not a pug in Barbary that had not a truer taste 
of things. Rymer was as ignorant of ' Gorboduc ' as 
Voltaire, without Voltaire's excuse. He, however, pro- 
fessed to regard its plot as better adapted to tragedy 
than any which Jonson or Shakespeare had had the 
luck to follow. The following is the way it appears in 
his account : " Here is a king, the queen, and their 
two sons. The king divides his realm, and gives it be- 
twixt his two sons. They quarrel. The elder brother 
kills the younger. Which provokes the mother to kill 
the elder. Thereupon the king kills the mother. And 
then, to make a clear stage, the people rise and despatch 
old Gorboduc."^ It is to this collection of blunders that 
Voltaire was mainly indebted for his own errors. He 
was a man of genius, however, and could not content 
himself with simply reproducing what some one else 
had said. He felt the need of filling up the bare out- 
lines of Rymer 's account, and enriching it with some 
additional details. The box on the ear is, however, the 
principal contribution which his imagination made to 
the incidents of the play, as reported by the authority 
he followed. 

After what has just been related, no one will be likely 
to assert that Voltaire's acquaintance with a work can 

1 Rymer's ' Short View of Tragedy ' (1693), p. 124. 
39 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

be assumed, merely because he chanced to mention it or 
even professed to give an account of it. The caution is 
all the more needed because many of his misstatements 
were not only repeated at the time by others, but even at 
this day are occasionally reproduced by writers who nat- 
urally cannot be expected to believe that a man of his 
intellectual rank and genius should speak ignorantly 
when he spoke so positively. This is true in particular 
of what he said of ' Gorboduc' His utterly false report 
of a book which he had never seen has been accepted as 
true not only by men who have never read it themselves, 
but by men who profess to have read it, and very 
likely have done so. The influence of a man of genius 
upon a man of talent is perhaps best exemplified in the 
case of Villemain. That distinguished French scholar 
and critic told us that he did not know of any work more 
declamatory and insipid in the midst of its horrors than 
this tragedy of ' Gorboduc' To this he added that 
Voltaire had given of it "a pleasant and veracious 
analysis." ^ 

1 CEuvres de M. Villemain. Etudes de litt&ature ancienne et eirangere, 
page 214. V&idique is Villemain's word, the translation of which I have 
italicized. 



40 



CHAPTER III 

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

In making the acquaintance of Shakespeare Voltaire 
felt that in certain ways he had stumbled upon a treasure. 
He had no disposition to keep to himself what he had 
found. He became animated indeed with something of 
the feelings of the explorer. He had lighted upon an 
unknown land, and he showed all the zeal of a discoverer 
to communicate to the world what he had there seen 
and heard. He said — and at a later period he kept 
repeating it on every pretext — that it was he who had 
first made Shakespeare known to France. In one sense 
it was perfectly true. Others before him had announced 
the existence of this great constellation in the northern 
sky; but their words had attracted no attention and 
aroused no interest. 

He could have said more. It was Voltaire who first 
really introduced Shakespeare to the knowledge of the 
Continent. To bring about such a result circumstances 
came to the aid of his abilities. For all literary as well 
as diplomatic purposes French was at that time the 
language of the European mainland. Everywhere culti- 
vated men read it, everywhere they conversed in it. 
The greatest monarch of his time spoke it better than 
he did his native tongue. In it his own royal academy 

41 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

published its proceedings. Indeed as late as 1783 it 
gave a prize for a treatise — it was published in 1784 — 
which should furnish the most satisfactory answer to 
these questions: How came the French language to be 
universal ? By what title does it merit that prerogative ? 
Is it likely to maintain it always? It is somewhat sig- 
nificant that only a very few years after the appearance 
of this essay the proceedings of the academy which 
awarded it the prize were published in German as well 
as in French ; and only a few years later still that they 
were published in German alone. 

The universal acceptance which the French language 
had won with all the cultivated classes of the continent, 
it continued to retain during the whole life of Voltaire. 
To no one of his compatriots was the fact more a source 
of gratification than it was to himself. He dwelt upon 
it with pardonable pride in published treatises and in 
private letters. In his discourse to the French Academy 
in 1746, on the occasion of his reception into that body, 
he made it a subject of congratulation that the French 
author was read everywhere, not through the imperfect 
and inadequate agency of translation, but in the words 
of his own vernacular. The Holy Father was as familiar 
with the tongue as with the learned language in which 
he taught all Christendom. The great Frederick had not 
only made the speech his own, he had made it that of his 
court and country. In the capital of the mighty empire, 
which extended over a large share of Europe and Asia, 
French dramas were regularly played to delighted audi- 
ences which perfectly understood and appreciated their 
beauties. The desire of justifying the general favor 

42 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

which the tongue had gained, and of increasing its 
spread, was one of the principal motives which led 
Voltaire to advocate constantly the rectification of its 
orthography, and the preparation of a great lexicon 
which should contain all its authorized words with their 
authorized uses. The irregularity of the speech irritated 
him. He constantly deplored the lack of a satisfactory 
dictionary. Both these were with him standing griev- 
ances. " Our language," he said in a private letter of 
1767, "is spoken at Vienna, at Berlin, at Stockholm, 
at Copenhagen, at Moscow. It is the language of 
Europe. But for it we must thank the goodness of our 
books, and not the regularity of our speech. Our 
excellent artists have caused our stone to be taken for 
alabaster." ^ 

Universality such as this was sure to give French 
ideas headway everywhere. It helped the reputation 
of comparatively feeble writers. We can accordingly 
understand how much it must have done for him who 
was the most celebrated author of his time. Durinsr all 
the latter half of his long life Voltaire had for his 
audience the whole of Europe. In this respect no other 
writer has rivalled him before or since. There have 
been greater authors than he ; but few indeed are those 
who have possessed so great a variety of powers. There 
has never been any one, with a reputation purely literary, 
who has filled so large a space in the eyes of his con- 
temporaries. Byron had something of the same uni- 
versal acceptance. But Byron died young; besides, his 
vogue was only that of a poet. Voltaire's mere length 

1 Letter of August 7, 1767, to M. Guyot. 
43 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

of life, coupled with constancy of production, gave him 
that compound interest of reputation which comes from 
being for a long period before the public. But besides 
being a poet, he was novelist, philosopher, historian, 
essayist, controversialist, critic. There was hardly a 
field of intellectual activity into which he had not 
ventured; and even where he had not gained great 
success, he had acquitted himself with credit. 

The extension of his native speech was therefore to 
Voltaire something more than a subject of patriotic 
congratulation. It was a distinct personal advantage, 
and he enjoyed it to the uttermost. Not alone France, 
but all the countries of Europe furnished him with 
a body of enthusiastic admirers and disciples. If there 
was any exception to this general rule, it was England. 
There his influence was less than elsewhere ; but even 
there it was great. French, for obvious reasons, was 
not so familiar to so many of its inhabitants as it was 
to the dwellers on the Continent ; yet it is probable 
that the number of those acquainted with the speech 
was at that time proportionately larger than now. Be 
that as it may, for those who could not read it, transla- 
tions of his more important works were provided. These 
brought the knowledge of his opinions to a race which 
looked upon the land to which he belonged with jealous, 
when it did not with hostile eyes. Yet the members 
of it were frequently influenced by what he said far 
more than they would have been willing to confess. 
But if with the English his words carried weight, to 
the rest of Europe they carried conviction. By many 
they were accepted as incontrovertible gospel. Even 

44 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

those who most bitterly resented the views he expressed 
on matters of religion deferred largely to his judgment 
on matters of literature. Friend and foe alike recog- 
nized the prevalence and potency of this influence. 
" But what does it avail," said Lessing with some bitter- 
ness, " to raise objections against M. de Voltaire ? He 
speaks, and the world believes." ^ 

Voltaire, it has just been said, was he who introduced 
Shakespeare to the knowledge of the Continent. Here 
a distinction must be made. The verb just employed 
describes all that he really did. He introduced Shake- 
speare to the European mainland ; he did not make it 
acquainted with Shakespeare. It is not easy to overrate 
the influence he exerted in exciting the curiosity of the 
Continent about the English dramatist. It is very easy 
to get a perfectly unwarranted and exaggerated impres- 
sion of the value of the information in regard to that 
dramatist's writings which he condescended to impart to 
its inhabitants. They learned from him of the existence 
of Shakespeare. They learned that his countrymen 
regarded him as another Sophocles, that they called him 
the divine. They learned that his plays, though mon- 
strosities taken as wholes, contained some most admi- 
rable passages. But of Shakespeare himself they scarcely 
learned anything. The specimens of his work which 
Voltaire communicated, at first with praise, were very 
meagre. Even then they gave in nearly every instance 
an inadequate and sometimes a perverted idea of the 
original. His later and fuller versions were little more 
than travesties. It is a question, indeed, whether the 

^ Hamburgische Dramaturgic, No. 10, June 2, 1767. 

45 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

appreciation of Shakespeare, which was sure to come to 
the Continent sooner or later, was not retarded rather 
than advanced by the knowledge Voltaire imparted, 
coupled with the views he expressed. He was responsi- 
ble for the critical estimate of the dramatist which con- 
tinued to prevail in Europe during a good share of the 
eighteenth century. There is little need to cite the 
opinions of other men. They usually knew nothing of 
the English dramatist save what Voltaire told them ; and 
he told them very little. They consequently do hardly 
more in most instances than echo his words. 

There are three public references which Voltaire 
made to Shakespeare during the years that immediately 
followed his first acquaintance with the poet. One is 
contained in the discourse upon tragedy which was 
prefixed to the printed play of Brutus^ originally brought 
out on the stage in December, 1730. Another is in his 
essay on epic poetry, and the third in his Lettres Philo- 
sophiques. The first published of these — the discourse 
upon tragedy — was in the form of a dedicatory epistle 
to Lord Bolingbroke. It was largely devoted to a com- 
parison between the stages of France and England. It 
has an interest of its own because in it we see Voltaire 
wavering between the larger dramatic liberty prevailing 
in the latter country, even though it degenerated, as he 
believed, into license, and the strict conventions, often 
assuming a character purely arbitrary, which held in 
restraint the freedom of the playwright in his own land. 
In Bolingbroke he found a man who took a view of 
Shakespeare not essentially different from his own. He 
had no need therefore to combat any undue and unjusti- 

46 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

fiable admiration. He conducted himself accordingly. 
He assumed what he felt to be a generous attitude 
toward this culprit of genius, who, though guilty of the 
grossest theatrical crimes, had to a certain extent atoned 
for his offences by performing some most dazzling dra- 
matic exploits. 

In the course of this prefatory letter Voltaire gave a 
translation of the address of Brutus to the people con- 
tained in the third act of ' Julius Csesar.' It is both the 
earliest and the most faithful of any attempt on his part to 
reproduce a passage of Shakespeare. In fact, it is the only 
adequate one he ever made. It is short ; but though 
short, it is sufficient as far as it goes. His next refer- 
ence to the dramatist was incidental, and naturally dealt 
in criticism alone, and not in citation. Voltaire had 
been in England about a year and a half when a little 
volume containing two essays of his in the language of 
the country, was brought out at London. The work 
was so well done that his enemies were henceforth dis- 
posed to attribute its correctness, not to his own unaided 
efforts, but to the labors, or at any rate to the super- 
vision, of friends whom he had made in the land of his 
exile. His correspondence shows that from the begin- 
ning he had been impressed by the energy of the English 
tongue,^ and the ambition to compose in it was stimu- 
lated by his desire to contribute still further to the suc- 
cess of an undertaking in which he had the deepest 
personal interest. Both of these essays were designed 
to call attention to the Henriade, the new edition of 
which was on the point of appearing at London. One 

1 Letter of Nov. 22, 1733, to M. Brossetti. 
47 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

of them was devoted to the subject of epic poetry. It 
was mainly given up to brief notices of certain wiiters 
of various countries who had produced work of this 
nature. Here consequently it was not Shakespeare who 
came under consideration, but Milton. 

Of Milton Voltaire spoke as Avell as he could of an 
author with whom he had the least possible sympathy. 
It was undoubtedly his interest just then to do so. He 
was writing for an English audience, and with the intent 
to secure their support for a work of his own soon 
to be published. Naturally he would be careful to 
refrain from saying anything to offend the susceptibil- 
ities of those he was addressing. His real opinion of 
Milton found later much more accurate expression in 
the words put in the mouth of Pococurante in his 
Candide ; and later still in the article entitled Epopee in 
the ' Philosophical Dictionary.' This last abounds in 
blunders so peculiarly preposterous that momentary 
indignation speedily subsides into positive enjoyment. 
More entertaining even than the misstatements of fact is 
the critical outlook. After speaking of Milton's reply 
to Salmasius he tells us how little likely was such an 
atrabilious pedant to please the polished and delicate 
court of Charles II., and such members of the nobility as 
Rochester and Buckingham. All these lofty characters 
held in detestation the man and his poem. With their 
feelings Voltaire fully sympathized a hundred years later. 
Yet it is not unreasonable to believe that at the time of 
his stay in England he honestly made a strenuous effort 
to admire a good deal which in his heart he thought 
abominable. It was a sort of courtesy that he owed to 

48 



fIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

the opinion of the country which had received him 
hospitably. The spirit is to be approved, even if the 
attempt met with but scant success. 

Of course in the account of Milton contained in the 
' Essa}^ on Epic Poetry,' Voltaire contrived to introduce as 
facts a number of fictitious statements. One or two of 
them may be worth mentioning here, not for any im- 
portance they have in themselves, but as furnishing still 
further illustration of the unflinching consistency with 
which on every possible occasion he exhibited himself as 
the great enemy of exactitude. Samuel Simmons is pretty 
well known to us as the original publisher of ' Paradise 
Lost.' The contract he made for the payment of it has 
conferred upon him a sort of quasi-immortality. But in 
this essay of Voltaire's a man named Tompson, appears 
in that capacity. Under that disguise we are enabled to 
detect Tonson, the later purchaser of the copyright. At 
the time the poem appeared the future publisher was not 
even in his teens. A special contribution of his own 
Voltaire also made to the swelling mass of misstatement 
about the favor or rather disfavor with which the great 
epic had been received at the time of its appearance. 
He assures us that Milton never lived to see a second 
edition of his principal work. 

In the essay as it appeared in English at the end of 
1727, Voltaire had no comment to make on Shakespeare. 
But a few years after his return from exile he published 
in French an enlarged edition of the treatise. In it he 
inserted a passage about the dramatist. It occurs only 
incidentally in the course of his remarks upon Homer. 
Of that poet he thought none too highly. He distinctly 
4 49 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

preferred Vergil. Likes and dislikes of this sort are 
witliin limits matters of personal taste with which no 
one but the individual himself has any concern. But 
to some it will seem a suggestive fact that the three 
greatest authors of their respective countries, Homer, 
Dante, and Shakespeare never found much favor in 
Voltaire's eyes. Of them all he expressed at times 
peculiarly disparaging opinions. 

In the course of his remarks upon Homer he was seek- 
ing to explain the great vogue which that poet had with 
his countrymen in spite of his manifest faults. The 
matter was one, he said, which had long puzzled him. 
At last he found its parallel in Shakespeare. By him 
the paradox of Homer's reputation was explained. Then 
he went on to give the following account of the attitude 
exhibited by the English toward their favorite author. 
To them he was their greatest tragic poet. With his 
name the epithet of " divine " was almost invariably 
coupled. The announcement that one of his plays was to 
be acted was sufficient to fill the theatre, as could not be 
done by the ' Cato ' of Addison or the Andromaque of 
Racine, excellently translated as was, in his opinion, 
that masterpiece of the French stage. Yet these plays 
of Shakespeare, he tells us, are really monstrosities. 
The action of some of them lasts a good many years. 
The hero baptized in the first act dies of old age in the 
fifth. No examples of such a nature can indeed be found 
in the editions of Shakespeare to which English readers 
have access; but a stern solicitude about the exact 
truth was never permitted by Voltaire to blunt the 
point of an effective statement. He further depicted a 

50 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

number of things which, as a man brought up in the 
traditions of the French stage, naturally struck him as 
improper where they were not actually offensive. In 
these plays are seen, he said, sorcerers, peasants, drunk- 
ards, buffoons, grave-diggers in the act of making a 
grave, and singing drinking-songs as they play with the 
skulls of the dead. Even in the simple report of what 
lie had before his eyes Voltaire was enabled to free him- 
self from the tyranny of exactness. The grave-diggers 
sing songs ; but they are not drinking-songs. In the 
exercise of their calling they throw up skulls ; but they 
do not play with them. 

Nothing, continued Voltaire, can be imagined more 
monstrous and absurd than what will be found in 
Shakespeare. Yet in spite of these things, most offensive 
to what he deemed true taste, he recognized the privilege 
of genius in striking out a path for itself and leaving 
behind excellence that can only plead in its favor that 
it has followed the beaten path. " When I began to 
learn the English language," he added, " I could not 
understand how so enlightened a people could admire 
an author so extravagant. But when I gained a fuller 
acquaintance wdth the speech, I perceived that the 
English were right, and that it is impossible for a whole 
nation to be deceived in a matter of sentiment, and to be 
wrong in being pleased. They saw, as I did, the gross 
faults of their favorite author, but they felt better than 
I his beauties, all the more remarkable because they are 
lightning flashes which have sent forth their gleams in 
profoundest night." It is the old story of the barbarism 
of the Elizabethan age which crops out in these last 

51 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

words. For repeating it Voltaire can hardly be blamed. 
It expressed the view not uncommonly held in the 
eighteenth century by the English themselves. 

It is in the closing words of this passage that Voltaire 
took the most advanced ground he ever occupied, 
so far as his appreciation of Shakespeare was concerned. 
It is the only suggestion to be found in his numerous 
remarks upon the English dramatist that there might be 
depths of creative art which no critical plummet had yet 
sounded. He did not commit himself too boldly in his 
concession ; he hedged it in with limitations : but still 
the concession exists. He was led to make the reflection 
he did by the contemplation of the continuous hold 
which Shakespeare had kept over the hearts of his 
countrymen. For a hundred and fifty years, he said, 
that dramatist had enjoyed his reputation. The writers , 
who had come after him had served to increase rather 
than diminish it. The great judgment of the author of 
'Cato,' the talents which had made him secretary of 
state, had never been able to place him by the side of 
Shakespeare. " Such," concluded Voltaire, " is the 
privilege of creative genius. It strikes out for itself a 
path which no one has travelled before. It moves for- 
ward without guide, without art, without rule. It loses 
its way in its progress ; but it leaves far behind it every- 
thing which can boast only of reason and correctness." 
Here the critical outlook is much broader than any 
which the author indulged in at a later period, and the 
tone more kindly and generous. It evinces a much 
deeper insight into the nature of Shakespeare's art than 
the far more widely known passage likening the poetic 

52 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

genius of the English to a leafy tree sending out its 
branches irregularly and at random, though always with 
vigor, but dying if clipped and pruned after the manner 
of the trees in the gardens of Marly. 

It was, however, by what he said in the third of these 
works — the ' Philosophical Letters ' — that Voltaire more 
particularly awakened the curiosity of the Continent 
about Shakespeare. These were first published in 
London in 1733, and appeared there under the title of 
' Letters Concerning the English Nation.' They came 
out under the supervision of his friend Thieriot, who 
was then staying in that city. Of course this edition 
was a translation. The original, which appeared in 
France the following year, was there designated as 
Lettres Philosophiques. Voltaire encountered many 
trials and tribulations in his efforts to bring his work 
before the pubHc, and the deed was accomplished at last 
in a surreptitious way. To the modern reader, accus- 
tomed to much bolder speculation and far more bitter 
satire, the hostility which these essays met with, both 
before and after their appearance in France, may excite 
a certain measure of surprise. Professedly the work 
was innocent enough. It purported to be made up of 
letters written by Voltaire to his old comrade Thieriot, 
on the various things which had attracted his attention 
and aroused his interest during his exile. It was merely 
to gratify the thirst for useful information on the part of 
this friend that he had jotted down the impressions 
which he had received of the island and the islanders. 
Now they were to be given to a larger circle. 

So we are told in the preface to the English volume. 

53 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

An impression to the same effect is conveyed in Vol- 
taire's correspondence. It hardly needs to be said that 
this account of their origin is largely mythical. Some 
things in them there are which had doubtless been com- 
municated by him to his friend ; but no such carefully 
wrought and brilliant sketclies of men and manners ever 
constituted the matter of private letters. The work 
consists of a series of rambling but delightful essays 
upon the government, the philosophy, the poetry of the 
English, and more than all upon their religion, or rather 
their religions. To the abundance of these latter Vol- 
taire attributed the fact that they lived in peace with 
one another. There was a subsidiary motive in the 
composition of the ' Letters ', which has almost a right 
to be termed the leading one. Under cover of describing 
what he saw in England he took occasion to put in a 
light rendered odious by comparison whatever he found 
objectionable in France. 

From the point of view of the upholders of political 
and spiritual despotism the work could never have been 
regarded as innocent. No one was likely to be deceived 
by the bland profession that it was merely a picture of 
the manners and customs of the English. The advo- 
cates of all repression of thought, save of their own way 
of thinking, were in no danger of being misled by the 
apparent artlessness with which Voltaire betrayed their 
cause while professing to stand up for it. They were 
not imposed upon — he could hardly have had the 
expectation that they would be — by his pretence of 
being shocked at the impiety of views which he heard 
with horror, but was careful to bring out with peculiar 

54 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

x\gox and effectiveness. The ' Letters ' opened with 
an account of the Quakers. The interview between 
Voltaire and the eminent and benevolent member of that 
sect whom he visited, and who came to take him to one 
of their meetings, reads very much like a myth; but the 
man unquestionably had a being, even if the conversation 
did not. Whether as portrayed he existed in the 
flesh, or purely in the spirit, he served the writer a most 
useful purpose in enabling him to express views about 
church and church government which, though aimed 
ostensibly at the members of the Anglican body, bore 
down even more heavily upon the clergy of his own 
land. The sentiments, though put in the mouth of a 
Quaker, were expressed with a wit and keenness which 
no Quaker up to this time had succeeded in exhibiting. 
The EngUsh edition of the work came out in August, 
1733. It consisted of three thousand copies. Of the 
feeling entertained about it in Great Britain it is not easy 
to give a satisfactory account. In none of the periodi- 
cals, so far as I can discover, was there any notice taken 
of it whatever. This, however, means little, if anything ; 
for those productions, besides being few in niunber, 
were not apt then to take notice of anything literary 
worth noting. But the private correspondence of the 
period seems also to be fully as barren of allusion. Still, 
whatever opinion was held about it there is hardly any 
doubt as to its success so far as that was indicated by its 
sale. Voltaire certainly was well satisfied with the 
reception of his work in the land of which it treated. 
"The letters philosophical, political, critical, poetical, 
heretical, and diabolical," he wrote in April, 1734, " have 

55 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

met with great success." That was because, he added, 
" the English are damnable heretics,^ accursed of God, 
and are all so constituted as to approve of the works of the 
devil." ^ His report of the favor with which the work 
was received by them can be accepted with scarcely any 
qualification. The subject would naturally be of interest 
to the men of that nation. There was comparatively 
little in the ' Letters ' to offend their susceptibilities, and 
a good deal to flatter their self-love. Unquestionably 
some hostility was aroused by his comments upon 
Shakespeare and the EngUsh drama generally. This we 
shall see manifested later ; but at the time there was no 
public exhibition of it. 

Nor could the Anglican clergy have been much pleased 
with the mocking tone which pervades Voltaire's utter- 
ances about them, though in almost every instance 
there was a designed reflection, either by implication or 
by contrast, upon the corresponding members of the 
French church. Still, men are never disposed to enjoy 
the vicarious punishment inflicted upon themselves 
for the benefit of other offenders. Neither the matter 
nor the manner of Voltaire's comments upon the English 
ecclesiastics could have furnished them pleasant read- 
ing ; and there was certainly little limit to its impudent 
drollery. The established church, we are assured, had 
retained a great number of the Romish ceremonies, but 
especially that of receiving with most scrupulous atten- 
tion the tithes. Those who made up the convocation, in 
the days when that body was allowed to meet, had the 

1 The Rabelaisian word papefifjws is the one used here by Voltaire. 

2 Letter to M. de Forraont, April, 1734. 

56 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

power of sentencing to the flames books that were 
impious — that is to say, books written against them- 
selves. Unlike what was often found in France, the 
dignitaries of the church were old men. They were 
generally stiff and awkward in their manners, never 
having been able to shake off the rusticity of their 
university training. Hence, lacking the power to please, 
they were obliged to rest content with their own wives. 
The vice to which they were specially addicted was the 
gentlemanly, or rather old-gentlemanly, one of avarice. 
Certain liberties too were allowed to the inferior clergy, 
which to their credit they never abused. They were 
permitted to drink in taverns ; but if they ever got fud- 
dled, they did so in a serious way and thereby occasioned 
no scandal. There was no real persecution or pros- 
elytizing; but no one could hold an office without 
being ranked among the faithful. By this expedient 
such numbers of dissenters had been converted that not a 
twentieth part of the nation was outside of the estab- 
lished church. In business, however, they met on 
common ground. Anglican and non-conformist, Jew, 
Gentile, and Mohammedan had in that but one creed. 
They dealt with one another, they confided in one 
another fully. It was only to a bankrupt they applied 
the name of infidel. 

Voltaire's observations were very apt to be of the 
nature of a two-edged sword. Satirical strokes of the 
kind just mentioned cut both ways. They could not be 
expected to gratify the members of the Anglican com- 
munion ; but they were as little calculated to add to 
the complacency of the French clergy. Furthermore, 

57 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

no occasion was neglected to suggest, if not to emphasize, 
the contrast between the religious and the political free- 
dom enjoyed in the one country, and the restraint placed 
upon both in the other. It was an unfortunate fact 
that a just tribute could not be paid to the manners 
and customs of the English without seeming to satirize 
the French. The work was therefore destined by its 
very nature to provoke hostility. For some time before 
it appeared in France Voltaire was conscious that he 
was standing upon a mine. Imprisonment, exile loomed 
up before him as possibilities. At a little later period 
he remarked that the only replies to his ' Letters ' which 
he feared — there were several of them — were lettres 
de cachet?- There was some reason for the dread. In 
fact his words imply that he felt that a certain justifi- 
cation existed for Englishmen in speaking of the French 
government very much as Frenchmen spoke of the 
Turkish. If his report can be trusted, it was in the 
following way that they expressed themselves: "-The 
English think," he wrote, half humorously, half seriously, 
" that half of France is confined in the Bastille ; the 
rest are reduced to beggary; and all the too daring 
authors are put in the pillory." 2 it was not entirely 
true, he added. There was, however, enough of truth 
in it to make him feel that it was desirable to take 
precautions. 

Accordingly in April, 1734, at the time copies of the 
French edition of the ' Letters ' were thrown upon the 
market — published of course without his consent and 

1 Letter of July 24, 1734, to M. de Cideville. 

2 Letter of Feb. 24, 1733, to Thieriot. 

58 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

much to his vociferous indignation — he had found it 
convenient to be at a goodly distance from Paris. He 
was attending the marriage of the Due de Richelieu at 
Monjou near Autun. Warned in time of what was 
impending he slipped away from the place some daj-s 
before the official sent to arrest him arrived. Two 
visits to the Bastille had not impressed him with its 
attractions as a place of even temporary sojourn. Nor 
did any other of the royal fortresses appeal to him as 
a desirable abode for one who sought relief from the 
burdens of life. He had conceived, he wrote to one of 
his friends, a mortal aversion to a prison.^ He was ill ; 
and the close and musty air did not agree with his 
health. Serious as it assuredly was in some ways, there 
is a certain suggestion of opera bouffe about the whole 
business. The officer despatched to take him into cus- 
tody made no unbecoming haste in the effort to reach 
him before his departure ; and the journey he was about 
to undertake for that purpose has the appearance of 
having been proclaimed as with the sound of a trumpet. 
Ample warning of his coming was furnished. Voltaire 
found no difficulty in disappearing as soon as the news 
of the explosion reached him. After some wanderings 
he retired to Cirey in Champagne, close to Lorraine, 
which was not then under French jurisdiction. There 
he was in a position to cross the border any moment 
that it became necessary. 

Meanwhile the men, whose feelings his book had 
outraged, proceeded to do everything that lay in their 
power to attract attention to it and excite the curiosity 

1 Letter of April, 1734, to the Comte d'Argental. 
59 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

of the world about it. The most devoted friends of the 
author could not have labored more zealously in its 
behalf than did its enemies. It was condemned by the 
parliament of Paris as scandalous, as contrary to religion, 
to good morals, and to the respect due to the powers that 
be. It was ordered to be torn in pieces and cast into 
the fire by the executioner. The sentence was carried 
into effect on the 10th of June. Provincial parliaments 
were disposed to follow the example of that of the 
capital. " If this holy zeal continues," wrote Voltaire 
to a friend, " the process of burning will make the tour 
of the realm. I shall be burned a dozen times," he 
added. " Between us, it is something very much to 
one's honor; but one really must have some modesty." ^ 
Never indeed did a work have a more magnificent 
advertisement. Doubtless its author would have pre- 
ferred the personal comfort and more limited sale which 
would have attended its authorized publication, to the 
delays and obstructions which preceded its issue and 
the condemnations which followed it. Under any cir- 
cumstances it would have been sure of success ; nor is 
it necessary to agree with a single one of its views to 
maintain that it would have deserved all the success it 
received. Still, he had the consolation of knowing that 
his opponents were doing everything they could to 
advance the circulation of the volume. The results 
speedily made themselves manifest. It was no short 
time before his book had more than travelled into every 
corner of France. It had traversed the whole length 
and breadth of Europe. 

1 Letter of July 24, 1734, to M. de Cideville. 

60 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

The part of the work which concerns us here are the 
letters that treat of the English drama. To this subject 
two of them were devoted. One was on its comedy, 
the other on its tragedy. In the remarks upon the 
former not so much even as the name of Shakespeare 
appeared. That he had ever written a play of that char- 
acter was something that Voltaire either did not know 
or did not think worthy of mention. The only authors 
of this kind whom he recognized and wrote about were 
Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Congreve. He referred 
indeed to Sir Richard Steele and Colley Gibber as good 
comic writers still living — in the case of one of them 
a singular oversight; for Steele had died the year of 
his own return from exile. 

Voltaire was disposed to think highly of English 
comedy, especially as represented by the three men 
first mentioned. Their work has come to be looked at 
askance in modern times, even where it is not actually 
neglected. This, however, has never been due to its 
lack of wit, but to the abundance of its immorahty. He 
himself incidentally gave a picture of its character and 
of the state of society which generated it, in the com- 
ments he made upon Congreve's plays. This author, 
he tells us, had raised the glory of English comedy to 
a greater height than any one before or since. The 
criticism is very much in the spirit of that delightful 
ignorance of his which constantly spoke of the time 
of Charles H. as the reign of politeness and the era of 
the fine arts. But Voltaire's lack of acquaintance with 
even the existence of the better literature of a better 
period did not prevent him from noting with keen 

61 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

insight the peculiar nature of the one with which he 
had become familiar. The language of the characters 
in these plays, he remarked, is always that of men of 
honor ; their actions are those of knaves. This shows, 
he added, that Congreve was perfectly well acquainted 
with human nature, and frequented what is called poHte 
society. 

It is the views he expressed about Shakespeare in 
the letter on tragedy which dominated for half a cen- 
tury the opinion of the Continent ; which did not give 
way indeed until the great dramatist took the field, it 
may be said, in person. In it further was displayed 
that extravagant admiration for the ' Cato ' of Addison 
which was to find constant expression during the rest 
of his life. Here, in his opinion, was a play written in 
perfect taste. If it had not in every respect reached 
the highest ideal, it had furnished the model for all 
succeeding writers. What the merits were which en- 
titled it to this lofty position it is easy to discover from 
the views about the drama to which Voltaire never 
ceased to cling with almost passionate fervor. It con- 
formed in every particular to the rules. It observed the 
unities. It had no comic scenes intermixed with its 
tragic. No one appeared in it below the rank of a 
patrician or of a foreign monarch. It shed no blood 
before the eyes of the spectators. Cato, though ex- 
hibited to the audience in his dying moments in order 
to make a few closing remarks, had been considerate 
enough to fall on his sword behind the scenes. Every- 
body throughout had conducted himself with the most 
conspicuous propriety. There was, to be sure, an insipid 

62 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

love story, against the constant introduction of which 
into tragedy Voltaire steadily protested in print, though 
he usually gave way to it in practice. Certain other 
deficiencies there were. But while the existence oi" 
these prevented the play from being considered perfect, 
it did not prevent it from being a beautiful as well as 
a rational piece. 

Besides these negative merits Voltaire credited this 
tragedy with certain positive ones. As regards its 
diction and the beauty and harmony of its numbers 
he deemed it a masterpiece. Cato himself he declared 
to be the greatest character that had ever been brought 
upon the stage. But Voltaire knew also perfectly well 
the wide gulf that lies between taste and genius. No 
more than Addison's countrymen did lie venture to set 
Addison's tragedy beside the plays of Shakespeare as an 
exhibition of power. He began his observations upon 
the latter poet with the remark that the English spoke 
of liim as the Comeille of their nation. This was the 
way the comparison appeared originally. No one but 
a Frenchman would have thought of applying to Shake- 
speare a description which almost every Englishman, 
even at that time, would have regarded as distinctly 
derogatory. Later the remark appeared, with mucli 
more fidelity to fact, that his countrymen considered 
him another Sophocles. Voltaire naturally took no 
such extravagant view of his greatness. " His genius," 
he observed, " was at once strong and abundant, natural 
and subhme, but without the smallest spark of taste, 
and devoid of the remotest idea of the rules." In these 
words he set the tune which was played with slight 

63 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

variations by countless critics on the Continent, and 
somewhat in England itself, all through the eighteenth 
century. He further observed that these plays of Shake- 
speare which are christened tragedies are in reality noth- 
ing but monstrous farces. Yet they contain scenes 
so beautiful and passages so full of the grand and the 
terrible that they have always been played with pro- 
digious success. Later writers had accordingly been 
tempted to imitate him ; but they had succeeded only 
in reproducing his absurdities without ever exhibiting 
his power. The natural consequence had followed. 
The merit of Shakespeare had been the ruin of the 
English stage. 

Voltaire told us that the world — by which in this 
instance he meant the Continent — had heard only of 
the faults of Shakespeare. It would have been nearer 
the truth to say that it had never heard of him at all. 
It became now his pleasing duty to inform it of the 
beauties which atoned for these faults. To convey an 
idea of them he selected the famous soliloquy of Hamlet. 
This he translated into French. It was not rendered 
literally, he was careful to remark, but in such a way 
as to give a conception of its spirit. " Woe be to those 
translators," he exclaimed, " who by seeking to give the 
meaning of every word, enfeeble the sense." He cer- 
tainly had no, intention of laying himself open to any 
of the penalties involved in this denunciation. It seems 
only fair indeed to re-translate his version into English 
with tolerable literalness, not indeed to give an idea of 
its spirit, but to get from it the sort of impression which 
Frenchmen would receive of the thoughts and feelings 

64 



FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SHAKESPEARE 

which Shakespeare was seeking to convey. Here ac- 
cordingly is the soliloquy as it reaches us after having 
passed through the medium of two translations : 

" Pause, it is incumbent to choose and pass in an instant 
From life to death, or from existence to nothingness. 
Cruel gods, if there be any gods, enlighten my heart. 
Must I grow old, bowed under the hand that insults me, 
Endure, or end my ill-fortune and my fate ? 
Who am I ? What holds me back ? And what is death? 
It is the end of our ills, it is my sole refuge : 
After long delirium it is a tranquil slumber. 
One falls asleep and all dies ; but a frightful awakening 
May perhaps succeed to the pleasures of sleep. 
We are threatened, we are told, that this short life 
Is by eternal torments immediately followed. 
O death 1 fatal moment I dreadful eternity I 
Every heart, at thy name merely, is congealed with terror. 
Ah I were it not for thee, who could endure this life V 
Who would bless the hypocrisy of our lying priests? 
Flatter the faults of an unworthy mistress ? 
Grovel under a minister of state, pay court to his pride ? 
And show the weakness of his downcast soul 
To ingrate fiiends, who turn away their eyes? 
Death would be too sweet in extremities like these, 
But doubt speaks, and cries out to us. Stop. 
It forbids our hands indulging in that happy homicide, 
And of a warlike hero makes a timid Christian." ^ 

This is a fairly literal reproduction in English of 
Voltaire's representation in French of Hamlet's soliloquy. 
It would be unjust to base upon the re-translation any 

1 At a later period Voltaire added to this translation another literal 
one, line for line. The inability to consult early editions of his works 
renders it impossible for me to say where and when this second version 
appeared. From some contemporary English comments I am inclined to 
put its production about 1760: but this is purely conjectural, and may 
be far out of the way. 

5 65 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

opinion whatever of the poetic merit of his version. 
But one can get from it a correct conception of its fidel- 
ity to the original. We hardly need his asseveration 
that there was no attempt to render the latter word for 
word. Are we any better off as regards its sense and 
spirit ? What idea could his countrymen have got from 
it of what Hamlet said ? Its composition reminds one 
of the proportion which sack bore to bread in Falstaff's 
tavern-account. There is but a half-pennyworth of 
Shakespeare to an intolerable deal of Voltaire. 



66 



CHAPTER IV 

VOLTAIRE'S BRUTUS AND ZAIRE 

Voltaire, as a Frenchman, had been profoundly 
struck with the freedom of thought and speech which 
he found prevalent in England. To us at this time the 
political and religious liberty then enjoyed there deserves 
anything but unqualified praise. To the man, however, 
who had been twice imprisoned in the Bastille, it 
seemed almost ideal. He was never weary of contrast- 
ing the freedom of utterance which prevailed in the one 
country with the shameful oppression under which it 
languished in the other. It was his own bitter personal 
experience that led him to declare that the highest right 
of humanity consisted in dependence upon law, and not 
upon the caprices of men. The French theologians, 
according to him, were so enamoured of the doctrine 
of the immortality of the soul, that they sought, when- 
ever possible, to furnish speedy and convincing evidence 
of its truth to those who presumed to doubt it, by burn- 
ing their bodies, " Why is it necessary," he exclaimed 
with some bitterness, " to endure the rigors of slavery in 
the most beautiful country of the universe, which one 
cannot leave, and yet in which it is dangerous to live ? " 

But the freedom of the English stage, especially as 
represented by Shakespeare, was to him full as much of 

G7 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

a revelation. It broadened, at least for a time, his con- 
ception of the privileges of the dramatist. It led him 
at first to question the justice of the rules prescribed 
and the metliods followed in his own country. It 
forced upon his attention the limitations of the French 
drama. They were not limitations existing in nature, 
they were frequently not imposed by the authority of 
the ancients. They were in fact nothing but conven- 
tions accepted by it, which time and custom had at last 
made sacred. Why was it always necessary to go back 
for characters to the everlasting Greeks and Romans? 
Why should not subjects be taken from modern history, 
and if from modern history, why should not modern 
names be used ? These things had been done, it is true, 
though Voltaire did not say it ; but they had been few, 
they had been far between, they had made but little 
impression. He felt further the tyranny of the restric- 
tions which these conventions imposed, not only upon 
the subject of the play, but also upon its conduct. It 
occurred to him that it might work no harm if there 
was a little less talk and a little more action. Further- 
more, while the indiscriminate slaughter found in Shake- 
speare could not of course be tolerated, why should not 
more latitude be conceded to the dramatist in the dis- 
posal of inconvenient characters ? It was hard, in 
particular, for him to see why the hero should be per- 
mitted to kill himself in the sight of the audience, and 
yet have the privilege denied him of killing somebody 
else. These and similar questions presented themselves 
to his ever active mizid as he studied with attention the 
English stage. 

68 



VOLTAIRE'S BRUTUS AND ZAlRE 

He began to feel that the delicacy upon which his 
conntrymen had prided themselves was somewhat too 
delicate. Was it not therefore desirable to transplant 
some of the features of this foreign drama into that of his 
own land ? Of course it had gone much too far ; but 
had the P'rench gone far enough? It struck him that 
here was the point where they had been at fault. There 
was nothing at which the Euglisli stage stopped. In 
consequence they overstepped constantly the bounds of 
dramatic decorum. But on the other hand the French 
failed because they did not venture at all. They did 
not reach the tragic because they were afraid of going 
beyond it. But wherever the English had actually 
succeeded, was it not worth while to follow in their 
footsteps? The dead body of Cato's son, brought in and 
shown to his father, had been admired both in Eiigland 
and Italy. No one was shocked by it ; all indeed had 
been impressed by it. Why could not similar represen- 
tations be tolerated in France ? Nature is the same every- 
where, and if such scenes be not inherently objectionable, 
why cannot the French bring themselves to accept them 
also ? Strokes of a majestic and terrible nature should be 
rare ; for if often repeated, they lose their effect. But if 
the manner be in accordance with the matter, that which 
might seem commonplace and childish would become in 
the hands of a great master something to awe and to 
fascinate. No one but Shakespeare, the English them- 
selves admitted, could call up the spirits of the dead ; but 
as they obeyed his call, the more striking was his 
success. 

To views like these Voltaire gave frequent utterance 

69 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

after his return from exile. Furthermore he set out 
seriously to introduce upon the French stage certain 
things which had impressed him when seen upon the 
English. He did not go far ; pretty certainly not so far 
as he was at first disposed to go. He came to recognize 
that a good deal which he was inclined to regard with ap- 
proval would not be allowed ; for with a nation wedded 
to the behef that its art had already reached perfection, 
innovation of almost any sort was likely to partake in 
its eyes of the nature of profanation. At a later period 
he said of the scene just mentioned, that if the dead 
body of Marcus were brought upon the stage, as in the 
' Cato ' of Addison, with his father shedding tears, the 
parterre at Paris would roar at such a spectacle, and 
the ladies would turn away their heads. Yet it was 
clear to him that such proceedings were not merely 
legitimate from the point of view of art, but they con- 
stituted a powerful addition to the effectiveness of the 
representation. " With what rapture," said he, "have 
I seen Brutus holding in his hand the dagger, still wet 
with the blood of Csesar, and haranguing from the 
rostrum the Roman populace." But no assemblage of 
artisans and plebeians would have been tolerated for a 
moment upon the French stage. Voltaire did not say 
even then that this refusal was a mistake. In the reac- 
tionary mood which came over him later, he would have 
been still less disposed to make any such admission; 
but it is pretty evident that he so regarded it at the 
time. 

Accordingly his attempts to introduce into the drama 
of his own land those features of the English stage 

70 



VOLTAIRE'S BRUTUS AND ZAIRE 

which he favored were in large measure tentative. The 
only one in which any boldness was displayed — La 
Mort de Cesar — was accompanied with apologetic utter- 
ances. He professed that its principal aim was to bring 
to the knowledge of his countrymen that there were 
other methods and other rules of dramatic representa- 
tion than those of their own stage ; and to lead them in 
consequence to consider whether the boundaries of their 
theatre might not be profitably enlarged. " France is 
not the only country," he wrote to one of his critics, 
" where tragedies are written ; and our taste, or rather 
our practice, of putting upon the stage nothing but love- 
dialogues does not please other nations. Our theatre is 
ordinarily devoid of action and of great interests. ... If 
you had seen an entire scene of Shakespeare played as I 
have seen it, and such as I have pretty closely translated 
it, our declarations of love and our confidants would 
appear pretty poor stuff in comparison." ^ It mat- 
tered therefore Httle to the public whether La Mort de 
Cesar were a good or bad piece in itself. Its aim was to 
give his countrymen a correct idea of the English taste.^ 
This play was therefore avowedly an imitation. But 
there were other scenes taken from Shakespeare in 
which it did not occur to him to say anything whatever 
about his original. In five of the plays which he wrote 
during the score of years that followed his return from 
France, the obligations, not indirect but direct, which he 
was under to the English dramatist, are plainly percep- 
tible. By some a sixth has been added. These will be 

' Letter of Nov. 14, 1735, to Desfontaincs. 
2 Letter of Oct. 14, 1735, to the Abbe' Asselin. 
71 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

considered in the order of their publication. For most 
of them tliis is the same as the order of tlieir production 
on the stage. 

The first of these six was the tragedy of Brutus. It 
was the earliest one which he brought out after his return 
from exile. It was first acted on the 11th of December, 
1730, but gained then only a moderate success. The 
play, as printed in 1731, was preceded by the discourse 
already mentioned, upon tragedy, which embodied many 
of the views that Voltaire's residence in England had led 
him to entertain. It is commonly said that he was 
inspired to write this piece by having witnessed a repre- 
sentation of ' Julius Csesar.' Yet it would be hard to 
detect in it any specific obligation to Shakespeare, 
though the existence of such, men have occasionally 
professed to find. It is the general influence of the 
whole English stage upon the action and movement of 
the play, upon the outspokenness also of its political 
utterance, that we recognize, rather than the special 
influence of any particular author. Much more fre- 
quently, however, has it been charged that the hint of 
the whole piece and much of its treatment have come 
from an entirely different quarter. The letter to Boling- 
broke prefixed to the play contained, almost at its be- 
ginning, an error of fact. This is not very astonishing 
for Voltaire ; the wonder is that it contained but one. 
He reminded his friend that they had both been equally 
surprised that no Englishman had selected as a subject 
the first Roman consul condemning to death his son for 
having been concerned in a conspiracy to restore the 
Tarquins. The stern virtue which had preferred one's 

72 



VOLTAIRE'S BRUrUS AND ZAIRE 

country to one's child had seemed to both of them 
peculiarly fitted to attract the attention of English play- 
wrights. These, in Voltaire's opinion, were not gifted 
with the power of depicting love between the sexes. 
Their success lay in the representation of love of 
country. 

It does not convey a high opinion of the knowledge 
of human nature, possessed by either Bolingbroke or 
Voltaire, to believe that the spectacle of a father put- 
ting his own son to death, for any cause, could of itself 
ever be agreeable to the audience of any nation, unless 
under very exceptional conditions of public sentiment 
or popular excitement. We may respect the judicial 
attitude of mind which does not hesitate to inflict upon 
one closely allied in blood the penalty which would fall 
remorselessly upon some one far removed. We may 
admire the devotion to duty which sacrifices an erring 
child to the cause of the country he has sought to betray. 
But it is useless to try to pretend that the sight of 
such a spectacle contributes to enjoyment. To fancy 
that it would appeal particularly to the English was 
part of that mistaken impression about them which pre- 
vailed largely at that time upon the Continent. The 
truth is that Voltaire's choice of a subject was largely 
influenced by a fondness on his part, which was almost 
morbid, for those which involved the taking of life by 
the one who stood in the closest sort of relationship to 
the victim. The killing of a parent by a child enters 
into the plot of a number of his tragedies. In the 
ancient legends he adopted for treatment he seemed to 
select by preference those in which this incident belongs 

73 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

to the story. In (Edipe the father has died at the hand 
of his son. In Eriph.yle, in Semiramis^ in Oreste, it is 
the mother who meets the Uke fate. The situation is 
sometimes reversed. In Merope it is the mother who 
dehberately determines to slay the youth who turns out 
to be her own child. 

If any fault can be found with Voltaire in these 
instances, it is in the selection of a story of which such a 
feature forms an integral part. But there are other 
cases in which he dragged in the motive with little, if 
any, justification from history or legend. In La Mort 
de Cesar the idle gossip, preserved by Plutarch, which 
made Brutus a natural son of the dictator — who was 
but fifteen years older — is not merely accepted as true, 
but upon it the development of the plot is made to turn. 
In Mahomet the case is even worse. The murder of 
a father by a son is brought into the story with the 
admission that for it there is nowhere the slightest 
authority in history. To an author with this natural 
bent for the introduction of parricide into his dramas, 
filicide would have seemed a not unsatisfactory variation 
of the same theme. This stone, therefore, which, accord- 
ing to him, the English had rejected, became in Brutus 
the corner-stone upon which he built his tragedy. 

He was soon informed that his assertion was unwar- 
ranted ; that the stone had actually not been rejected. 
As early as the summer of 1732 an adaptation of his 
Brutus had been prepared for the English stage by 
William Duncombe, a writer of that time. A series of 
unfavorable accidents prevented it from being brought 
out for two years ; according to its author it was a series 

74 



VOLTAIRE'S BRUTUS AND ZAIRE 

of accidents that prevented it from being successful 
when it was brought out. First acted on November 25, 

1734, it had had a run of but six nights. The following 
year it was published. In the preface to the printed 
play Duncombe pointed out Voltaire's error. A tragedy 
on this very subject had been written by Nathaniel Lee, 
and had been produced in 1681. After having been 
played three days, its representation had been stopped 
on the ground that it reflected on the king. The origi- 
nal statement, however, in the discourse on tragedy was 
never modified at all by Voltaire in the body of the 
epistle. In later editions, a note was appended to the 
effect that there was such a piece by an author named 
Lee, but it was entirely unknown and never played. 
This was adding another error to the one previously 
committed. Not only had Lee's tragedy been printed 
the year of its original representation, but several edi- 
tions of his dramatic works, in which this particular one 
was contained, had appeared since his death. 

In England the translation, and along with it the 
French original, were speedily made the subject of 
unfavorable criticism. This was the work of Aaron 
Hill, who was at that time concerned in a periodical 
publication called ' The Prompter.' In it a great deal 
of attention was paid to matters connected with the 
theatre. In a review, which appeared in February, 

1735, of the plays produced up to that time during the 
season, Duncombe's adaptation was noticed, and inci- 
dentally plagiarism was imputed to Voltaire. " The 
first piece brought on," said he, " was the tragedy of 
' Brutus.' . . . Everybody knew it was (and the author 

75 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

himself gave it for no more than) a translation from 
M. de Voltaire, who has not only taken the hint from 
our own countryman, Lee's ' Brutus,' but coldly imi- 
tated his finest scenes. The ill-success that this play 
met with gave me as much satisfaction as I had already 
conceived indignation against the poet for having been 
so servile as to stoop to translate a Frenchman's plagi- 
arism, and to bring it on a stage which our own Brutus 
might have trod once more with true Roman dignity. 
The fate it met seemed to me a sort of poetical punish- 
ment inflicted by the town on an author who wanted 
to invigorate the Roman eagle's wings with French 
instead of British fire." ^ Hill, who was almost certainly 
responsible for these words had been long laboring zeal- 
ously to have his own translation of Zaire brought out 
at Drury Lane. It is not unlikely that the manager's 
delay gave additional zest to his enjoyment of the 
failure of the piece which had been put on before his 
own. 

Borrowing from Lee under the circumstances would, 
if true, have implied peculiar baseness upon the part of 
Voltaire. He would appear in the light of having 
first stolen his work from an author far inferior ; then, 
besides making no acknowledgment of the obligation, 
denying even the existence of his original. It must be 
said that there was much in his conduct toward Shake- 
speare that renders such action on his part possible if 
not probable ; yet in this case, there is little justifiable 
ground for the charge of plagiarism. It is not infre- 
quently safe to rely upon Voltaire's slight acquaintance 

1 The Prompter, No. xxix., February 18, 1735, 
76 



VOLTAIRE'S BRUTUS AND ZAIRE 

with English authors and works that he takes the pains 
to mention. This confidence can be increased a hun- 
dred-fokl in the case of those that he fails to mention. 
The weifiht of evidence is all in favor of his total igrno- 
ranee of Lee's work, at the time he made the assertion 
which is found in his discourse upon tragedy. The 
plots of the two pla3^s are in most respects as far apart 
as they well can be in two pieces based upon the same 
subject. Certain resemblances there are ; but besides 
being superficial, they have almost the nature of the 
inevitable. In both dramas the cause of the ruin of 
Titus is a fatal passion which seduces him from alle- 
giance to his country. In Lee's play he is in love with 
Teraminta, a natural daughter of the exiled king. In 
Voltaire's it is with his legitimate daughter, Tullia, who 
has been detained in the house of Brutus. But a story 
of this sort was then a necessity of the situation. No 
drama could be expected to have much hope of success 
on the English stage without love as a leading motive. 
On the French it could have none at all. If once 
that passion were introduced into the play, love for a 
daughter of Tarquin would naturally be selected to 
account for the defection of the son of Brutus from the 
patriot cause. The further resemblances are incidental 
and of slight importance ; the differences both in details 
and in the general conduct of the plot are extreme. 

Accordingly in his Brutus Voltaire — so it seems to 
me at least — cannot be fairly charged with unacknowl- 
edged obligations to an English author. In this instance 
injustice has been done him even by the writers of 
his own land. But so much cannot be said in the case 

77 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

of several tragedies which followed. He has told us 
himself how profoundly he had been impressed with the 
appearance of the ghost in Hamlet. A scene of this 
sort he attempted to reproduce in his tragedy of 
Eriphyle, which was brought out in March, 1782. 
Neither the play itself nor the reception it met altogether 
pleased him, and after it had been withdrawn from 
representation he did not even suffer it to be printed. 
As later he introduced this same feature into Semiramis, 
it will be well here to follow his example and defer all 
consideration of his course in imitating the ghost scene 
until that piece is reached. Eriphyle was followed by 
Zaire, one of Voltaire's greatest dramatic successes. 
It was produced in August of this same year. In it 
there can be no question of the influence of Shakespeare. 
The imitation of 'Othello' is distinctly perceptible, in 
spite of the particular variations which taste or necessity 
compelled. It extends alike to the general outline of the 
plot and to its details. 

A close comparison makes this point very plain. 
In both these plays the action turns upon a dispro- 
portioned match. In both there is the same all-absorb- 
ing love on the part of hero and of heroine. In both 
there is the same unfounded jealousy on the part of 
the hero. For furnishing it a pretext for its display, 
in place of the handkerchief in ' Othello ' is substituted 
in Zaire an intercepted letter, whose purport is mis- 
taken. In both the hero has a confidant to whom he 
reveals his inmost heart. He it is who sympathizes, or 
pretends to sympathize, with his superior, and assists 
him in carrying his wishes into effect. In the French 

78 



VOLTAIRE'S BRUTUS AND ZATRE 

play he is represented as being influenced by much 
higher motives than in the Englisli ; but as a dramatic 
character he is immeasurably inferior to the intellectual 
villain whom Shakespeare depicted. In both the hero 
murders the woman he loves, though in Zaire he does it 
decorously behind the scenes. The audience do not 
witness the act, they hear only the words attending its 
commission. In both the hero is made to wake sud- 
denly to the consciousness of his crime, of the causeless- 
ness of his jealousy, of the irreparable wrong he has 
inflicted upon the woman wlio loves him passionately. 
In both he kills himself by way of atonement. « 

In the closing scenes indeed of both plays the re- 
semblances culminate. Like Othello, Orosmane before 
plunging the dagger into his own heart bids the hearers, 
when reporting on their return to their own land the 
story of these sad events, to record the misery which 
has befallen him, as well as the hapless fortunes of the 
woman, most precious, most worthy to be loved, but 
whose truth and devotion he has come to know too late. 
Nor does it seem straining the evidence to assert that 
in this play there are also reminiscences of ' Lear.' As 
Gloucester, after the terrible experiences he has gone 
through, dies between the extremes of joy and grief, 
when he comes to know Edgar, so Guy de Lusignan, 
released from his long imprisonment, dies as a result 
of the unexpected happiness of seeing once again his 
long lost, but at last recovered children. In both 
instances the death is related by the son in language 
not essentially different. Again, the same thought 
comes to the dying Edmund and to the sultan purpos- 

79 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

ing to die. To each, life has turned out a failure ; but 
to its last moments has been granted one signal consola- 
tion. To the lips of Edmund, as he hears of the fate 
of Goneril and Regan, whose passion for him has brought 
death to them both, come the words, " Yet Edmund 
was beloved." So when the truth of Zaire is re- 
vealed to Orosmane in a way not to be mistaken, his 
overcharged heart finds relief in the simple words, 
" I was beloved." ^ 

Voltaire dedicated this work to his friend Everard 
Falkener in an epistle of mingled prose and verse. In 
his ' Philosophic Letters ' he had called attention to 
the strangling of Desdemona by Othello in full sight 
of the audience. In the dedicatory epistle prefixed 

1 The reader can judge for himself of the likeness of these passages. 
In the last act of ' Lear ' Edgar relates to Albany the death of his father, 
on his revealing to him who he was and what had been his fortunes. He 
concludes with these words : 

But his flaw'd heart, — 
Alack, too weak the conflict to support ! — 
'Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief, 
Burst smilingly. 

The corresponding passage in Zaire reads as follows : 

Sa joie, en nous voyant, par de trop grand efforts, 
De ses sens affaiblis a rompn les ressorts ; 
Et cette e'motion dont son ame est remplie, 
A bientot epuise les sources de sa vie. 

Edmund's later speech 

Yet Edmund was beloved ! 
corresponds to that of Orosmane 

O ciel ! j'e'tais aime. 

It is not even so much the resemblance of the words which is of most 
account, as the resemblance of the situations in which they are uttered. 

80 



VOLTAIRE'S BRUTUS AND ZAlRE 

to Zaire, he had something further to say upon the 
same general theme when contrasting tlie French and 
Englisli stages. He rebuked the latter for its addiction 
to scenes of violence and bloodshed, and recommended 
the writers for it to imitate Addison, who, in spite of 
the insipid love-passages which he had introduced into 
his ' Cato,' still remained the poet of the judicious. 
But if he felt that the barbarousness of the English 
drama ought justly to receive censure, he professed him- 
self glad to acknowledge the debt due to it for better 
methods in which it had led the way. From it he had 
derived the hardihood which had prompted him to bring 
into his play the name of French kings and of men 
belonging to the ancient families of the realm. This 
he declared to be a novelty. He trusted it would be 
the beginning of a new species of tragedy which France 
did not know, but of which she stood in need. It 
strikes the modern reader as a peculiarly bold proceed- 
ing to venture upon such a statement about a kind of 
drama in which, not to speak of others, he had been 
anticipated by the great Corneille. Yet his assertion 
seems to have passed unchallenged at the time. But 
though he remembered to acknowledge an undeserved 
obligation to the English stage, he remembered to forget 
the obligation which he owed to its greatest representa- 
tive. Not a word was there about Shakespeare in this 
dedicatory epistle ; not an intimation that such a play 
as ' Othello ' had ever been present to his thoughts 
when he wrote Zaire. Nor in a later edition, contain- 
ing a second epistle to Falkener, who had become the 
English ambassador at Constantinople, was there the 
6 81 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

remotest allusion to the man from whom he had derived 
much which had given direction, if not distinction, to 
his own play. 

It is impossible to acquit Voltaire of disingenuousness 
in this omission. He had done no more than what he 
had a right to do in borrowing from Shakespeare the 
incidents he did. Speaking for myself at least, it does 
not seem to me that he exceeded the just privilege of an 
author who finds something admirable to imitate in the 
works of another author writing in a strange tongue. 
It is of the slightest possible consequence from what 
quarter a great writer gets his material ; what he does 
with it after he has gotten it is the all-important con- 
sideration. Voltaire's avowed aim was to enrich French 
literature with whatever was good in foreign tongues, 
and especially to enlarge the boundaries of the French 
drama. He recognized in Shakespeare certain methods 
worth following, certain motives worth adopting, certain 
scenes worth imitating. What fault can be found for his 
seeking to introduce them into the drama of his own 
land ? It is his attempted concealment of the act which 
exposes him to censure, and as much so for its irration- 
ality as for its futility. For in this case while many of 
the incidents were suggested by Shakespeare, the treat- 
ment he gave them was entirely his own. The play was 
a thoroughly French play, and in the French taste. All 
the more inexcusable, therefore was the sedulous care 
manifested to refrain from making the slightest allusion 
to the source from which so much had been taken. The 
obligations he was under were not indeed likely to be 
recognized by his countrymen, in the almost universal 

82 



VOLTAIRE'S BRUTUS AND ZAlRE 

ignorance of Shakespeare which then prevailed. But 
an author of the standing and genius of Voltaire is 
expected to act from a sense of right, and not from a fear 
of detection. 

But if the French did not observe his indebtedness, it 
did not escape the attention of the English. With them 
it was at the outset a matter of patriotic congratulation 
rather than of censure. It was first made subject of 
public remark when the adaptation of Zaire was brought 
out on the Loudon stage. This was the work of Aaron 
Hill, who had made the previous imputation of plagi- 
arism agfainst its author in the case of Brutus. Aaron 
Hill is not a writer of whom any one talks now. To 
the mass of educated men not even is his name known ; 
and if to know it involves the reading of his works, they 
are not to be condoled with for their ignorance, but to 
be congratulated. Yet among the illustrious obscure 
who occupy, if they do not adorn, a place in the literary 
annals of the first half of the eighteenth century, he 
looms up with a good deal of prominence. In his own 
day he had no small repute. There is no question that 
with many of his contemporaries he had the reputation 
of being a man of ability, and with some of being a man 
of genius. A writer, to impress himself thus upon his 
time, rnust have, it would seem, certain positive qualities. 
Yet after the diligent perusal of hundreds of his pages it 
is hard to find anything whatever to justify the high 
opinion entertained by many of his merits. 

One characteristic he possessed which may account 
in part for the estimate in which he was held. If he 
said nothing worth saying, never had any man a more 

83 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

impressive way of saying it. The assumption of superior 
knowledge and wisdom is so complete that the mind is 
disposed to reject the belief which forces itself upon it 
constantly, that all this lofty tone and talk clothes 
remarks which either have no discoverable meaning, or 
if they have a meaning have none of any importance, 
when unrolled at last from the turgid verbiage in which 
they are enveloped. His prose is in truth indescribable. 
To use one of his own phrases, he treated every subject 
he touched with a florid leafiness. Furthermore, while 
never vigorous, he was always vehement ; and to obtain 
the effect of the former, he betook himself to the femi- 
nine resource of italicized words. These are so abundant 
in some of his writings that one of his pages frequently 
gives the impression that a contest must have gone on 
in the printing-house between the two kinds of type, in 
which the roman got distinctly the worst of it. 

But however seriously Hill was taken by many of his 
contemporaries, he took himself far more seriously. No 
man possessed of moderate abilities ever had a more im- 
modera,te opinion of them. It was impossible for any 
person to have as much wisdom on any subject as he 
fancied himself to have on a large number. In particu- 
lar, no one could be so great a critic, poet, or dramatist 
as he in fullest sincerity thought he was all three. 
The reputation of Shakespeare won from him the tribute 
of conventional respect and conceded inimitableness ; 
but the' inferiority" of that author to himself in art 
was as manifest to him as a similar inferiority was to 
Voltaire. As he wrote to Fielding, the men who injure 
Shakespeare " are his implicit admirers, who make no 

84 



VOLTAIRE'S BRUTUS AND ZAlRE 

distinction between his errors and his excellence."^ 
Into this pit Hill took care not to fall. Accordingly, 
he pointed out his defects with a gentle but unsparing 
hand, " What obstruction of bold unprepar'd, yet, 
sparkling ?{/e," he wrote to Mallet in 1741, "do we see 
lost for want of being artfully made necessary^ among 
the passions, which start up, in Shakespeare." ^ This 
sentence is given as a specimen of his style, when he 
did not abandon himself altogether to italics. No one 
need trouble himself to ascertain its meaning. Hill's 
language did not really conceal thought, as he himself 
and perhaps some of his contemporary readers fancied ; 
it merely concealed what he thought he thought. 

Hill's self-conceit was indeed so colossal that it 
inspires something of that sort of respect which we all 
cannot help feeling for magnitude of any sort. His 
facility of writing he mistook for felicity. There was 
in him a little rivulet of poetry of the kind' then in 
vogue. In his effort to render it a river, he broadened 
it into a very shallow and muddy niarsh. With a pro- 
found belief in his knowledge of dramatic art, he brought 
out in 1723 a play entitled ' King Henry V.' It was 
partly taken from Shakespeare's, but besides the altera- 
tions, it contained some peculiarly preposterous additions 
of his own. That dramatist, he tells us in the prologue, 
had, 

" Blind with the dust of war, o'erlooked the fair." 

So he introduced several love-scenes, and a new char- 
acter, a woman whom Henry V. had seduced while 

1 Works of Aaron Hill, vol. ii. p. 134. 

2 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 215. 

85 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

Prince of Wales, and deserted as king. There is 
no question that Hill considered his play a great im- 
provement upon his predecessor's. His feelings were 
re-echoed in the account of his life prefixed after his 
death to his dramatic works. In it we are told, of this 
piece, that " where the characters have similitude, those 
parts may be said to be an improvement of the great 
Shakespeare." 

But Shakespeare was far from being the only one 
who benefited from his labors. The living were the 
objects of his solicitude much more than the dead. No 
one escaped his mania for giving advice. No station 
in life, no position in the public service, no eminence 
in any profession led him to hesitate about bestowing 
upon the occupant or possessor the result of his reflec- 
tions upon matters to which they might reasonably be 
assumed to have themselves devoted the attention of 
years. To Walpole he wrote, giving hints about poli- 
tics ; to Pope, about poetry ; to Garrick, about acting. 
Nor to these limited fields did he confine his restless 
and many-sided activity. He had ideas upon all sorts 
of subjects ; it is not improbable that some of them 
were of value. He indulged in schemes for extracting 
oil from beechnuts ; for the colonization of the present 
state of Georgia ; for the improvement of the art of 
war by sea and land ; for new modelling, arming, and 
increasing the swiftness of vessels, so as to revolutionize 
the whole sea-service of the world. To Chesterfield he 
wrote that he would with his consent send him occa- 
sionally reflections " out of the too trodden road, some- 
times commercial^ sometimes military^ and sometimes, 

86 



VOLT A IRKS BRUTUS AND ZAIRE 

too, not excluding mix'd amusements of a less severe 
attention." ^ He proposed himself as a correspondent to 
Bolingbroke, and that political leader was obliged to 
resort to the intervention of Pope to save himself from 
the infliction. 

But his interest lay most of all in the drama. There 
was no player of either sex whom he did not feel com- 
petent to instruct; and many there were ux)on whom, 
after the manner of Dogberry, he bestowed his tedious- 
ness. To Garrick he gave advice how to improve his 
acting in Shakespeare. It was not vanity, he assured 
him, that led him to venture upon this step. " A poet 
can best understand a poet," was the all-sufficing reason 
he supplied. To the really intelligent men among his 
contemporaries he must have seemed the most persistent 
and colossal bore of the century. With all this, there 
appears to be no doubt that he was as generous of nature 
as he was vain of opinion and verbose of speech. He 
belongs to a class of authors who are a source of peculiar 
annoyance to the critic, because while being intellect- 
ually feeble, they will not be so morally ; but along 
with the commonplaceness of their writings, and the 
ridiculousness of their pretensions, they will persist in 
being kind-hearted, self-sacrificing, not too bitter to 
their enemies, and ready to do everything that lies in 
their power for their friends. 

Hill tells us that he had formed a poor opinion of Vol- 
taire's poetical powers from reading some of his works, 
especially the Henriade. But Zaire captivated him. 
He at once set to work to translate it and prepare it for 

1 Works of Aaron Hill, vol. ii. p. 327. 

87 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

the English stage. He had completed it as early as the 
summer of 1733. In May of that year his version of 
one of its most effective scenes was published in a 
London magazine, with the statement at its head that 
the French play from which it was taken had had a 
run of thirty-six nights at Paris. ^ His adaptation he 
offered to the theatre for the benefit of his old friend, 
William Bond, who had been a coadjutor of his some 
years before in a periodical work called ' The Plain- 
dealer.' The managers seem to have accepted it. Cer- 
tainly during the latter half of the year he was all the 
while expecting to have his play — which he had en- 
titled ' Zara ' — speedily brought out. He put forth 
strenuous exertions to pave the way for its success. He 
wrote to Bolingbroke, to Pope, to engage their help ; 
to Thomson to secure the support of his friends, Dod- 
ington in particular.^ The play was always to appear a 
few weeks later. But the time kept receding. Months, 
years passed without its being put on the stage ; and in 
the meantime Buncombe's adaptation of Brutus had 
been produced and had met with but little favor. 

Bond, to whom ' Zara ' had been consigned, tried for 
two years to have it acted at one of the theatres. It 
was all to no purpose. At last he learned, not from the 
managers themselves but from others, that they were not 
disposed to bring out any tragedies at all. They inti- 
mated as their reason for this course that the taste of 
the town did not lie in that direction — which gives a 

1 Gentleman's Magazine, May, 1733, vol. iii. p. 261. 

2 Letters of Nov. 7 and Nov. 10, 1733. Works of Aaron Hill, vol. i. 
pp. 175, 177, 187, 

88 



VOLTAIRE'S BRUTUS AND ZAIRE 

rather good opinion of the taste of the town to him who 
is now compelled to wade through the pieces of this 
kind which were then produced. No other resource 
accordingly was left him but to accept the generous 
offer of a young gentleman — it was Hill's nephew ^ — 
to procure a sufficient number of persons and act with 
him this tragedy " at Sir Richard Steele's Great Musick 
Room in Villars-street, York Buildings." So it was 
brouglit out in June, 1735, and played for three nights. 
The first performance of the tragedy was itself attended 
by a tragedy. Bond, for whose benefit it was produced, 
took the part of Guy de Lusignan. But advanced in 
years and feeble, like the character he represented, he 
fainted on the stage, was carried home, and died the 
next day. Still the play, as performed by the amateurs, 
met with marked acceptance, according to the report 
found in ' The Prompter.' ^ Testimony from that quarter 
must, under the circumstances, be taken with a great 
deal of allowance. But there seems to be so much jus- 
tification for the assertion that all difficulties in the way 
of its public representation were smoothed over, and a 
little more than half a year later it was produced at 
Drury Lane. 

It repeated in London the success it had met with in 
Paris. It was brought out on the 12th of January, 
1736, and had the somewhat unusual experience for 
those days of an uninterrupted run of fourteen nights. 
It is generally reckoned the best of the pieces, amount- 

1 Victor's History of the Theatres of London and Dublin, vol. i. p. 40. 

2 The Prompter, No. lx., June 16, 1735. This contains a letter written 
by Bond a few days before his death. 

89 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

ing in all to nearly a score, which Hill wrote. One 
other feature signalized its production, and for it he seems 
himself to have been directly responsible. The title- 
role was taken by Mrs. Gibber, who, previously noted as 
a singer, made in this tragedy her first appearance as an 
actress, and at once achieved reputation. Nowhere in 
the preface to the printed play, nor in the dedication of 
it to the Prince of Wales, did Hill make any reference 
to the obligation which Voltaire lay under to Shakes- 
peare. But the fact was stated almost bluntly by 
Colley Gibber in the prologue written by him for it and 
recited by his son. It began with the then usual re- 
marks that the French extinguished largely their fire by 
their conformity to critical rules ; while the English, fol- 
lowing the freedom of nature, had let the flame rage to 
an ungoverned extent. In this play, however, they would 
have a chance to taste the excellences of both theatres ; 
a-nd the reason given for it is found in the following 
lines : 

" From English plays, Zara's French author fired, 
Confessed his muse, beyond herself, inspired; 
From rack'd Othello's rage he raised his style, 
And snatched the brand that lights his tragic pile." 

Voltaire was unquestionably pleased with this adapta- 
tion. "I have read the English Zdire^^ he wrote to 
Thieriot, " and it has delighted me more than it has 
flattered my self-esteem." In his second dedicatory- 
epistle to Falkener prefixed to the edition which ap- 
peared this year, he spoke of it very favorably, though 
he could not refrain from indulging in a satirical stroke, 

90 



VOLTAIRE'S BRUTUS AND ZAIRE 

assuredly well deserved, at a stage-direction in the 
translation. Nor could he save himself from falling 
into one of those blunders which were sure to drop from 
his pen the moment he set out to make any but the most 
superficial comment upon English literature. In this 
instance it was used to convey a compliment to Hill. 
He it was who had started a reform in the dramatic art 
of his country. According to Voltaire the English had 
a custom of ending each act with verses in a different 
style from the rest of the piece. These verses further- 
more were compelled to include a comparison. Even 
Addison, the most judicious of their writers, had re- 
sorted to this practice — so much, said Voltaire, does 
usage take the place of reason and law. The transla- 
tor of Zaire, however, had been the first to maintain the 
rights of nature against a taste so far removed from it. 
He had discarded the practice. He had felt that passion 
speaks always the language of truth, and that the poet 
should let his own personality disappear in order to 
have that of the hero alone impress itself upon the 
audience. 

Voltaire is here referring to the practice of ending 
the last speeches of acts with a rymed couplet instead 
of the regular blank verse. The style is in no way 
affected by so doing ; it is only the measure. It con- 
sists merely in the use of rymed lines instead of 
unrymed ones. But Voltaire's remarks on this point 
have just enough of resemblance to truth to impose upon 
those who had no more knowledge of the matter than he 
had himself, or rather had less. If he had said that the 
practice of ending acts — and he might have added scenes 

91 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

— with rymed couplets, and sometimes with two or three 
pair of them, was not very uncommon on the English 
stage ; if he had said further that these rymed couplets 
occasionally contain a simile, — to these two statements 
no objection could have been made. Had he also 
remarked that the sage Addison in his ' Cato ' had car- 
ried the practice to an extreme, he would have shown 
still more familiarity with the actual facts. Unfortu- 
nately two or three examples frequently furnished a 
basis satisfactory enough for Voltaire to found upon it 
a sweeping generalization. So a not infrequent custom 
of having a couplet or couplets at the end of an act — 
which couplets on rare occasions contained a compari- 
son — was transformed by him into a regularly estab- 
lished usage to which all conformed. Furthermore, 
in so doing, figures of speech were invariably employed. 
This custom Hill, in translating Zaire, had been the 
first to break through. The assertion was a particularly 
absurd one under the circumstances. He had only to 
look at this English adaptation of his play, upon which 
he was commenting, to see for himself that every one of 
its acts ended with a rymed couplet. But it was a still 
absurder assertion to come from a man who pretended 
to have read Shakespeare. With this author's ' Julius 
Caesar,' Voltaire was certainly familiar. Had he taken 
the pains to examine that play in regard to this par- 
ticular point, he would have found that the only act 
which terminates with a r3maed couplet is the last ; and 
that couplet contains no comparison. Further, of the 
eighteen scenes of this same drama but four end in such 
a way, including the one just specified ; and in none of 

92 



VOLTAIRE'S BRUrUS AND ZAIRE 

the four is there anything of the character of a rhetori- 
cal figure. 

Before this dedicatory epistle appeared, Voltaire's 
appreciative estimate of the adaptation had been con- 
veyed to Hill, either accidentally or designedly, through 
the agency of Thieriot. It produced from the transla- 
tor a letter to the original author full of the most flatter- 
ing avowals of admiration. They form so marked a 
contrast to some of his later utterances that they are 
worth citing for the sake of comparison. Hill observed 
that since he had now come to know Voltaire in spirit, 
he had a most melancholy sense of how much he had 
lost by being absent from London at a time when so 
many of his friends had enjoyed there the personal inti- 
macy of the author of Zaire. " But," he continued, " I 
know you in your noblest self, as millions now know 
Homer and Euripides ; and as future millions will Vol- 
taire, when envy shall be choked in dust, or France 
deserve it for producing you." ^ There was a good deal 
more in the letter, written in the same flamboyant style ; 
but this will serve to show something of the feeling 
which was at that time entertained in England towards 
the great Frenchman. There can be no question of the 
general friendliness then prevailing. 

Hill's letter, however, was more than one of acknowl- 
edgement ; it contained an item of news which showed 
how indefatigable he was in advancing the interests of his 
correspondent. Voltaire's Alzire had been brought out 
in Paris in January of this same year. There it had 
met with the most unqualified success. Hill hurriedly 

1 Letter of June 3, 1736, Hill's Works, vol. i. p. 241. 
93 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

prepared an adaptation of it for a company of actors who 
had opened for the summer the large theatre in Lincoln's 
Inn Fields. He distinctly implied that the motives 
which had induced him to set about the undertaking 
were of the noblest kind. He had written to Garrick 
that a poet could best understand a poet ; necessarily 
much more true was it that only a poet should translate 
a poet. But there were presumptuous beings who 
deemed themselves as capable of preparing an adaptation 
of Alzire as Hill himself. They were looking forward 
to the regular theatrical season as furnishing a fit oppor- 
tunity to reproduce it upon tlie English stage. To 
forestall such a calamity Hill threw himself manfully 
into the breach. He urged the actors to reopen the 
theatre just mentioned in order to perform his adaptation, 
which he had made from the original in three weeks. 
" I own," he wrote, " I have encouraged them to this 
attempt^ in summer, to protect you from a winter storm 
of mercenary pens, that, tempted by your Zaire's success, 
were threatening to disjoint Alzire ; but to prevent her 
from being blotted by defacing pencils, I chose rather to 
produce her hastily, than permit her to be robbed more 
slowly of her spirit, air, and likeness." Accordingly the 
translation of Alzire was brought out on the 18th of 
June of this year,^ just about two weeks after this letter 
was written. It met with a fair degree of success, and 
was played at least nine times. 

1 Genest's English Stage, vol. iii. p. 483. 



94 



CHAPTER V 

'THE DEATH OF C^SAR.' 

If Voltaire had been careful to refrain from express- 
ing obligation to Shakespeare in the case of Zaire, he 
was at first eager to avow it in the next of his plays 
tiiat comes here under consideration. This was the one 
entitled La Mort de Cesar. It professed to be written 
in the English style. That was the defence set up for 
its deviation from the character of the plays to which 
his countrymen were accustomed. One innovation there 
was which would hardly recommend it to the fastidious 
critics of that nation, who conceived that the limits of 
theatrical progress had been reached by the time Horace 
had laid do\vn rules for the government of the stage. 
It consisted of but three acts instead of the conventional 
five. But if this was certain to dissatisfy the French 
critic, there was one thing it lacked that was still less 
calculated to please a French audience. In it there was 
not the slightest trace of a love-story. So far indeed 
was the repression of this element carried that there 
was not even a female character. 

Such a treatment of his subject was supposed by 
Voltaire to represent the sort of feeling which prevailed 
among the people with whom for nearly three years he 
had made his home. He had constructed in his own 

95 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

mind an imaginary Englishman, who was delighted 
with sentiments and scenes which would repel the men 
of other races. In him the passions that influence the 
lives of most of us were swallowed up in the love of 
liberty and the love of country. Voltaire honestly con- 
sidered that this play of his, dealing with the death of 
Csesar, was written in what he called the English taste. 
It was a remark he repeated again and again. Yet the 
only real reason he had for taking this view was that 
it was not written in the French taste, or indeed, in the 
taste of any civilized nation. Still, the assumption 
served him, as we have already seen, as a quasi-apology 
for the character of the plot he had adopted. He ac- 
cordingly professed at the outset that his design was 
to give his countrymen a conception of the sort of 
tragedy which pleased the people on the other side 
of the channel. It was to illustrate the severe style 
they affected ; to give a life-like portrayal of the stern 
and even ferocious virtues which characterized their 
nature. Here was a son so eaten up with love of 
country that family ties and the sacredness of the pa- 
rental relation availed nothing in comparison. The 
austerity that marked the whole conduct of the piece 
was consequently to be cheapened nowhere by the pul- 
ing sentiments and tender motives which belong to the 
representation of the passion of love. 

Two things had been impressed upon Voltaire's mind 
by his visits to the London theatre. One was that the 
early English stage, as represented by Shakespeare, still 
held sway over the hearts of the English people ; the 
other was that in it female characters play often an 

96 



'THE DEATH OF CESAR' 

inconspicuous part. He attributed the latter fact to 
design. He did not perceive that it was a mere acci- 
dent of the situation. The main reason why female 
characters were hardly found in some Elizabethan plays, 
or had attached to them a subordinate interest, was 
the very natural one that there were then no female 
actors. The author in consequence did not feel himself 
compelled to provide places in the scene for such person- 
ages, where, if they did not appear, their absence would 
not be missed. Shakespeare was not only a great dra- 
matic genius, but also a practical playwright. Along 
with the desire to produce an effective work he had 
also the very natural motive of fitting certain parts to 
the capacity of the members of the company whom he 
knew best qualified to sustain them. Had there been 
great actresses in his day, he would have been eager 
to provide for them speeches and situations most suited 
to display their peculiar powers. No necessity of the 
sort existed in his time. Accordingly in introducing 
female characters, he simply followed the plain require- 
ments of the plot. In one case it might demand much 
of their presence; in another very little. 

There was at first no pretence on Voltaire's part that 
La Mort de Cesar was not inspired by the ' Julius 
Coesar ' of Shakespeare. During his stay in England 
he had been struck by the impression invariably pro- 
duced on the spectators by the performance of that 
tragedy. But him it had likewise impressed as much 
as it had Shakespeare's countrymen. Long after, when 
his attitude towards the great dramatist had become 
distinctly hostile, he bore testimony, as we have had 
7 97 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

occasion to observe, to its effectiveness.^ Much as 
he had been shocked by its extravagance, he had been 
equally struck by its power. There was the unde- 
niable fact that the interest inspired by the play had 
been sufficient to overcome in his own case, the re- 
pugnance he felt to what he called its absurd im- 
proprieties. For Shakespeare's tragedy violated every 
canon of art which he held sacred. A tumultuous 
crowd of the lowest class appeared more than once upon 
the stage. Questions, answers, retorts were exchanged 
between them and the higher personages of the play. 
In his eyes, one of these higher personages was himself 
little more than a buffoon. There was throughout a 
mixture of prose and verse. Men were slain in full 
sight of the audience. Worse than all, time and place 
were scandalously violated. The scene opened at Rome 
in 42 B.C., and ended at PhiUppi more than two years 
later. 

With all these violations of the eternal principles of 
art, the play was unmistakably one which affected the 
feelings profoundly. It fulfilled the one requirement 
beside which all other requirements are as naught. It 
did not bore. It kept audiences interested and excited. 
Why could there not be a treatment of the same theme 
which, while conforming to the rules, would at the 
same time preserve the effectiveness of the action? 
This was the thought which occurred to Voltaire. He 
accordingly set out to produce a drama which should 
combine French correctness and elegance with English 
force and fire. As the time of the action was to be 

* See page 11. 
98 



'THE DEATH OF CAESAR' 

brought into one day, his piece was accordingly made 
to correspond to the three acts of ' Julius Ca3sar ' which 
end with the circumstances attending and'' immediately 
following the death of the dictator. Here it was 
that great innovations were made upon the practice 
of the French stage. It was indeed only these last 
incidents that gave Voltaire's piece the slightest claim 
to be spoken of as having been written in the English 
taste. The rest of the play had as much title to the 
distinction as in the previous one of Brutus had been 
the execution of his son by the fcst Roman consul. 
In the two concluding scenes of La Afort de Cesar there 
was a professed imitation of the scene in the third act of 
* Julius Caesar ' in which speeches were made by Brutus 
and Antony to the Roman populace. As in the original, 
the dead body of the dictator was brought upon the 
stage. As in the original, a crowd of the common 
people formed the audience which was addressed by 
the two orators. In Voltaire's piece, however, the ne- 
cessity of the plot he had adopted required Cassius to 
take the place of Brutus. It would have been too 
much for even liis conception of the English taste to 
introduce a parricide delivering a speech in which he 
justified his murder of his father on the ground of 
love of country. 

Both for what it lacked and for what it contained 
Voltaire's tragedy was foredoomed to failure on the 
stage, even if it succeeded in making any appearance 
there at all. It was written as early as 1731. But it 
was impossible for him to get it played at the regular 
theatre. It was first presented in public in August, 1735, 

99 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

by the students of the college of Harcourt. Such per- 
sons, it was felt, were its proper actors ; a piece which had 
no female chai-acters could be best performed by boys. 
Some years later — towards the end of August, 1743 — 
it was brought out at last on the Parisian stage. The 
enthusiasm which a few months before had been evoked 
by Merope, in spite of its containing no love-scenes, had 
emboldened the managers to take this step. But the ex- 
periment was a failure. It was clear that whatever suc- 
cess the drama miglit gain would be rather a tribute of 
admiration and good-will paid to the actors than a proof 
of the interest inspired by the piece itself. Voltaire 
came himself to recognize that a play of this character 
had in it few elements to please a popular audience, 
constituted as was human nature, or as he was inclined 
to view it, Parisian nature. Yet he never lost faith in 
the tragedy, nor in the theory upon which it had been 
constructed. To have a play without love was an end 
to be kept in view ; to have it without a female char- 
acter was consequently a still nearer approach to the 
ideal. " I love more, in truth," he wrote to his niece, 
" one scene of Cesar or Catiline than all Zaire ; but 
Zaire makes pious and sensitive souls weep. Of them 
there are many ; and at Paris there are very few 
Romans." ^ 

Long before La Mort de Cesar had been acted upon 
the Parisian stage, it had been several times printed. 
Voltaire's indignation had been excited by the appear- 
ance of the spurious and incorrect edition of 1735. To 
his friends he sent at once corrected copies of the con- 

1 Letter of Nov. 17, 1750, to Madame Denis. 
100 



'THE DEATH OF C^SAR' 

eluding scenes. For the play in general, and for tliese 
scenes in particular, he assumed then a somewhat apolo- 
getic attitude. Tlie piece, he observed, had no other 
merit than that of revealing the character of the Romans 
and the characteristics of the English stage. The acts 
depicted in it were not in accordance with French man- 
ners, nor did the conduct of the play fall within French 
rules. But to make known the taste of our neighbors 
was to enrich the republic of letters.^ This was the justi- 
fication he put forth for violating the proprieties of the 
French theatre by bringing on the stage the corpse of a 
murdered man and a miscellaneous body of the populace. 
QThese two scenes he represented at that time as a rea- 
sonably accurate translation of the original of Shake- 
speare. At a later period he was rather anxious not to 
make this fact too prominent. He had become proud of 
what he had done ; he did not care to give too much 
credit to the source of his inspiration. There was some 
justification for the stand he then took. His version of 
the speeches of Brutus and Antony was about as clearly 
entitled to the character of a translation as had been his 
previous version of the soliloquy of Hamlet. 

As his play had been printed as it was not, he deter- 
mined to bring it out as it really was. Accordingly 
appeared in 1736 the first authorized edition. Voltaire, 
when publishing his works, had always a lot of dummies 
to sign their names to introductions in various forms 
which he himself wrote or inspired. Sometimes it was 
the publisher, sometimes an editor, sometimes a personal 
friend. Frequently it was an unreal being whom he had 

1 Letter of Oct. 24, 1735, to the Abbe' Asselin. 
101 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

created and endowed with a literary existence to father 
opinions for which he himself did not choose to be held 
directly responsible. He kept in stock, one might say, 
a nnml^er of imaginary abb^s who stood ready to do him 
service whenever service was needed. They sprang up 
at once if it was desirable to make an attack upon his 
enemies or to produce a defence or eulogy of himself. 
Names which had never been heard of before wrote him 
public letters in a style clearly modelled upon his own. 
They expressed themselves with such felicity and force 
that it was a wonder to their contemporaries that men 
who were capable of writing so well should be content 
to fall back into obscurity and write no more. It was 
rather a matter of pretended wonder ; for these practices 
rarely imposed upon any one, and in some instances 
were never designed to impose upon any one. 

This last was not always the case, however. In fair- 
ness ample allowance must often be made for the almost 
absolute necessity of such a course of proceeding. 
There was a holy inquisition presiding over literature in 
France, and the most innocent as well as the most harm- 
ful of books might be kept from publication by the in- 
terposition of fools and bigots. Furthermore the avowal 
of authorship brought with it not infrequently personal 
danger. Voluntary or involuntary exile was the least of 
the penalties to which the too daring writer subjected 
himself. A man brought up under such a system would 
ineAdtably acquire habits of evasion, subterfuge, and 
denial. Especially would this be the case if he treated 
of political or religious subjects. Unless he made up 
his mind to forgo writing at all, he had to resort for his 

102 



'THE DEATH OF C^SAR' 

safety to expedients of this nature. But habits of such 
a kind, once acquired, never limit their action to cases 
of necessity. Voltaire extended them constantly to 
literary matters wliere no further risk was run than that 
of criticism ; and he frequently did so, not so much even 
to further the spread of his own opinions as to minister 
to his personal vanity. 

In the case of La Mort de Crsar the man selected as 
sponsor for his views was his friend, the Italian author, 
Count Algarotti. He was staying at the time with Vol- 
taire at Cirey. He wrote a criticism of the play or rather 
a eulogy of it, with a defence of some of its peculiarities, 
in the form of a letter to another Italian. A French 
translation of this epistle was prefixed to the first author- 
ized edition of 1736. In its original Italian form — 
which was not published till the edition of 1763 — it 
reproduced a large number of Voltaire's ideas ; in the 
French version their resemblance to their source was 
even more striking. The translation indeed bore about 
the same relation to what Algarotti wrote in Italian, as 
the speech of Antony in the play did to the correspond- 
ing speech in Shakespeare. To use the terminology of 
music, while the motive was the same, the variations 
were so numerous and important as to give the composi- 
tion in places almost the character of a new piece. Alga- 
rotti must have had some difficulty in recognizing what 
he had said in his letter, as it appeared in the French trans- 
lation. As, however, he himself made no protest, it is not 
for others to take exception on his account to sentiments 
that were put in his mouth. 

Speaking through his friend, Voltaire was enabled 

103 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

to give an account of the play which could not have 
come with propriety from himself. It was intimated 
that in this piece the boundaries of the French drama 
had been ^enlarged beyond the point to which its pre- 
vious assumed perfections had been carried b}^ Corneille 
and Racine. There was furthermore a reference to the 
scenes borrowed from Shakespeare. In the account 
given of this adaptation the language employed in the 
two letters is worthy of comparison. Though the views 
in each case came from the same source, the expression of 
them is marked by noticeable variations. In the Italian 
letter Algarotti observed that Voltaire had undertaken 
to imitate the severity of the English theatre, especially 
Shakespeare, one of their poets, in whom, it had been 
said not unjustly, there are innumerable errors and inim- 
itable thoughts. He further added that his adapter had 
made the same use of him as Vergil did of Ennius. He 
had put into French the last two scenes of the English 
tragedy, in order to portray the two kinds of eloquence 
which succeed in persuading men to do most contrary 
things by employing the same arguments. It is in the 
following way that Algarotti expressed himself in his 
French letter under the skilful manipulation of the 
inspired translator. "M. de Voltaire," he is made to 
say, " has imitated in some places an English poet, who 
has united in the same piece the most ridiculous pueril- 
ities and the most sublime passages. He has made the 
same use of him that Vergil did of the works of Ennius. 
Of the English author he has imitated the last two 
scenes, which are the most beautiful models of elo- 
quence to be found in the drama." There is an almost 

104 



' THE BE A TH OF CjESA R ' 

diabolical ingenuity in the way in which this conclud- 
ing sentence is expressed. It could be supposed to 
refer to the original scenes — or rather the single scene 
— as found in Shakespeare ; it was meant to be under- 
stood as referring to the two which are found in Vol- 
taire's tragedy. 

To the play there was also a preface. This purported 
to come from the publishers. It has been imputed to 
the Abb^ de La Mare, to whom the preparation of the 
first edition was confided. It requires an innocence 
which verges closely on imbecility not to recognize in 
it the hand of Voltaire himself. Its ideas are his 
ideas ; his in some places are its very words. He took, 
however, tlie fullest advantage of the fact that the 
preface appeared to come from outside sources. The 
ascription of it to the publishers gave him the oppor- 
tunity, in which he always took delight, to speak of 
himself. The preface began with the assertion that it 
was Voltaire who had first imparted to his countrymen 
the knowledge of English literature. If any reader 
of his ever remained ignorant of that fact, it was due to 
no neglect on the author's part to keep him fully in- 
formed of it. Henceforth it was something which he 
can fairly be said to have dinned into the ears of his 
countrymen. " We are able," declared Voltaire, as pub- 
lisher, " to say that he is the first who has made the 
English poets known in France. He translated in 
verse, a few years ago, several fragments of the best 
English poets for the information of his friends, and 
by this means induced many persons to learn English. 
As a consequence that language has become familiar 

105 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

to people of education. . . . Among the most remark- 
able pieces of the English poets which our friend has 
translated for us, he gave us the scene of Antony and 
the Roman people, written a hundred and fifty years ago 
by the famous Shakespeare, and played still at the 
present day before crowded audiences upon the London 
stage. We have begged him to give us the rest of the 
piece, but it was impossible to translate it." 

Voltaire in the character of critic now proceeded to 
inform Voltaire as publisher why the whole piece could 
not be translated. " Shakespeare was a great genius," 
ran the account, "but he lived in a rude age. In his 
pieces is found the coarseness of his time much more 
than the genius of the author. M. de Voltaire, instead 
of translating the monstrous work of Shakespeare, com- 
posed in the English taste the ' Julius Caesar ' which he 
has given to the public." Then followed a few sentences 
which reveal his conception of what constituted the 
English taste. It requires a somewhat peculiar natm-e 
to find it attractive. Voltaire meant nothing offensive 
hj what was really an offensive picture ; on the contrary, 
he fancied that he was saying something complimentary. 
English taste, in his portrayal, found its chief pleasure 
in the admiration of what may be called the disagreeable 
virtues. To be outspoken and rough under the pretence 
of frankness ; to be repellent in behavior under the 
guise of sincerity ; to be inaccessible to all the gentler 
motives by which men are actuated, under the sway 
of feelings which clothe themselves with the title of 
love of liberty and love of country^ — these were the 
characteristics which in his opinion, appealed to the 

106 



'THE DEATH OF C^SAR' 

taste of the English. In accordance with this view he 
hticl avoided the introduction of the passion of love. 
While so doing he felt that he had perhaps gone to the 
other extreme. In the eyes of many, Brutus, he said, 
would seem possessed of too much ferocity. Still, it 
was necessary to paint men as they were ; and such as 
he actually was, he was here represented. In this 
tragedy, therefore, would be found depicted the genius 
and character of the Roman people as well as that of 
the English nation. In it would be discovered the 
dominant love of liberty which prevailed in both, as 
well as the audacities of representation which French 
authors rarely ventured to take. 

By writing this play Voltaire had put himself in direct 
competition -svitli the great master. He was not in the 
least anxious to avoid the comparison. He waa fully 
satisfied with the work he had accomplished. Of its 
general superiority to the corresponding tragedy of the 
English dramatist, he had no doubt. It is implied in 
the preface ; it is almost directly asserted in the adver- 
tisement to the reader prefixed to the pretended word- 
for-word version of the three acts of ' Julius Caesar ' 
which he published in 1764. This advertisement pur- 
ports to come from the pu.blisher : it is hardly necessary 
to say that it is Voltaire who is responsible for its every 
line. The reader is told in it that he will now be able 
to make a comparison between the works of Shakespeare 
and Voltaire, dealing with the death of Caesar. Then 
he can decide for himself whether the tragic art has 
made any progress since the days of Elizabeth. Yet 
this version of the English play is really an exhibition 

107 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

on Voltaire's part of practices which in an inferior man 
would be called fraud. This so-called literal transla- 
tion, as we shall see later more fully, stops designedly 
with the death of the dictator. The passages of the 
original in which Brutus and Antony address the popu- 
lace are carefully omitted. 

Voltaire was certainly wise in withholding from his 
readers any version of the scenes following the death of 
Caesar. He had good reason to shun the comparison, even 
if Shakespeare's words were given in a translation as 
bald and inadequate as that which he made of the rest 
of the three acts. In this instance it does not require 
national prepossession or the partisanship of race to rec- 
ognize the hopeless inferiority of his imitation to the 
original. The attempt in particular to reproduce the 
speech of Antony might well have deterred a bolder 
spirit than his own. His adaptation of it — which he 
at first called a translation — showed how little under- 
standing he possessed of the arts by which popular 
assemblies are swayed. These the all-comprehending 
mind of Shakespeare had either conceived of itself or 
had developed with peculiar effectiveness out of the 
scattered hints furnished by Appian. The baldest trans- 
lation of this speech compared with Voltaire's imitation 
of it will reveal the difference — not sesthetic but intel- 
lectual — in the skill with which the orator in each case 
is represented as playing upon the passions of the people. 
The contrast drawn by Antony between the charge of 
ambition brought against Csesar and the acts which 
implied the opposite ; the pretended deference to his 
assassins as honorable men ; the constant ringing of 

108 



'THE DEATH OF CJESAR' 

the changes upon the same words and ideas till they had 
wrought fully the effect they were intended to bring 
about, — this conduct was all lost upon Voltaire because 
he had little comprehension of the methods most suc- 
cessful in appealing to the feelings of a popular assembly. 

On the contrary, he sought to produce the result at 
which he aimed by making Antony resort to the cheap 
device of springing a surprise upon his hearers b}^ 
announcing that the murderer of Caesar is his son. It 
was an expedient as false in art as the asserted relation- 
ship was false in fact. It would have been spurned by 
the higher skill of the more commanding genius, who 
would have recognized at once that such a declaration 
by the orator at such a time would have defeated the very 
end he had in view. To the hearer, whether intelligent 
or unintelligent, it would have seemed, whatever its 
actual truth, to be nothing more than a falsehood con- 
cocted for his immediate purpose by a liar and a slan- 
derer, and not a secret wrung from the speaker in the 
excitement of the moment. Either it would have had no 
effect, or it would have had an effect exactly opposite to 
that sought to be produced. There are other and as great 
faults in this speech as found in the French play. Not 
only was it impossible for Voltaire to approach the spirit 
and fire of the original, but even more did he fail to con- 
vey a remote apprehension of the subtle insinuation 
which suggests what it does not say, the appeals which 
inflame the passions they pretend to calm, the thousand 
delicate touches defying analysis which make the speech 
of Antony the most effective of oratorical masterpieces. 

Equally inferior was his whole play upon the side of 

109 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

dramatic art. A motive false in fact, but falser still for 
theatrical effect, was made the central point upon which 
the interest of the play hinged. Voltaire could hardly 
have done anything better calculated to exhibit the supe- 
riority to himself of the assumed rude and irregular drama- 
tist who according to his account was infected by the 
barbarism of an uncultured age. Furthermore, he was 
hampered throughout by the rules of time and place to 
which he professed unswerving devotion, but which as 
4isual he obeyed in appearance while breaking in reality. 
In spite of the long period of labor he had spent upon 
the production of the piece, he had not taken the 
trouble to make those preliminary preparations for the 
denouement which would give to the events described an 
air of probability. In consequence everything is hurried 
beyond reason and belief. In the one day to which the 
action is limited two meetings of the senate are held for 
the purpose of carrying into effect Csesar's long-meditated 
plan of making himself king. In this one day the plot 
to murder the foremost man of the world is conceived ; 
in this one day it is carried into execution. The con- 
spiracy is, what no such conspiracy has ever been, the 
work of a moment. As on the one side the unity of time 
is discredited by crowding into it events which would have 
required and actually did require weeks for preparation, 
so on the other side the unity of place is made ridiculous 
by transactions which could never have happened on the 
same-spot. The scheme of assassination is concocted in 
open day, in the crowded capitol. In that same edifice 
Csesar holds the all-important interview with Brutus, in 
which he announces the long-deferred and astounding 

110 



'THE DEATH OF CESAR' 

news that he is his son. It is here too tliat later Brutus 
makes an appeal to his father to desist from his project 
of destroying the liberties of Rome. 

Upon the complications arising from this relationship 
between the two leading personages of the play Voltaire 
prided himself. Not content with portraying Cgesar as 
the benefactor of Brutus, he had made him his father. 
This contrivance for exciting interest he regarded as a 
master-stroke. Such a belief shows how inferior was his 
conception of his art to that of the man he unqualifiedly 
blamed or patronizingly commended. That in real life 
the murder of a parent by a child, or of a brother by a 
brother, has been perpetrated under the pressure of 
supposed duty, was no excuse for obtruding into a 
drama a motive for action which could not fail to make 
its hero repellent. Nor was Brutus portrayed in any 
way as an attractive character. He is not exactly detest- 
able ; but he approaches as near it as the unavoidable 
limitations of human nature will permit. His very 
virtues are repulsive. Moreover, the relationship repre- 
sented as existing between him and the man he has 
agreed to assassinate causes the action of the piece to 
assume a still more crowded and unnatural character. 
In it Csesar, who for no apparent reason has kept secret 
for more than a quarter of a century the tie between 
himself and Brutus, informs the latter that he is his son, 
though for no more urgent reason at this particular time 
than must have existed at a hundred others. He con- 
firms the statement by showing him the dying letter of 
his mother Serviha. Naturally the son is torn by con- 
flicting emotions at the unexpected and startling news. 

Ill 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

Still he is not diverted from the purpose to which he had 
pledged himself an hour or two before. As his father 
cannot be persuaded to conform to his political views, to 
give up the design of enslaving his country, the son 
feels that he cannot honorably withdraw from practising 
the " cruel virtue," as it is termed, of killing his 
parent, a deed to which he had previously engaged him- 
self, while in ignorance of their relationship. So out of 
pure love of country he commits parricide in the after- 
noon, though in the morning he had contemplated nothing 
worse than mere murder. 

Personal hatred, dislike, envy, and the hostility of 
faction were pretty certainly reasons why several of 
Voltaire's pieces were not successful on their first repre- 
sentation. There was nothing in their character to 
cause failure. They were suited to the taste that then 
prevailed ; they were conformed to the dramatic behefs 
that were then accepted. On later revivals they were 
not unfrequently received with the highest applause. 
But no genuine success could ever be expected at any time 
for a play like La Mort de Cesar. Voltaire had indeed his 
own reason for its failure. The noble and austere taste 
which alone could enjoy it no longer existed in the 
effeminate time which had followed the great age of 
Louis XIV. " Caesar without women," he wrote to 
Le Kain in 1760, " can never be played, save among the 
Jesuits." There was some truth in this view, but it was 
far from being the whole truth. That it was not ought 
to have been clear to him from the fortunes of the cor- 
responding English play. The uninterrupted success of 
that had never been due at all to its female characters. 

112 



'THE DEATH OF C^SAR' 

These are but two in the large number which crowd its 
scenes. Of these two, one plays a wholly and the other 
a comparatively insignificant part. Voltaire missed the 
real reason for the lack of favor his drama met with. 
It was one which, had he suspected, he would have re- 
fused to acknowledge. Its failure was not due to the 
absence of female characters. This enhanced the dilh- 
culty of pleasing, but did not render it insuperable. 
Nor was it the effeminate taste of the spectators that 
was at fault. It was his own deficiency in that supreme 
dramatic art of adapting means to ends in which he 
complacently fancied himself immensely superior to the 
great Elizabethan. 

That a play with a hero so disagreeable, pursuing a 
course of conduct so repulsive, should be represented as 
beinsf in the Enoflish taste was offensive at the time to 
Englishmen themselves. Aaron Hill made himself a 
mouthpiece of their feelings. After the success of his 
versions of Zaire and Alzire he had begun to fancy that 
he possessed a sort of proprietary interest in all of Vol- 
taire's plays. It is apparent that he had it in mind at 
first to make an adaptation of La Mort de Cesar for the 
London stage. But he was revolted by the portrayal in 
it of the character and conduct of Brutus ; he was indig- 
nant that such a portrayal should be spoken of as being in 
accordance with the taste of the English. It was a charge 
against his countrymen wliich he resented. To accept 
an inhuman and bloody enthusiast as an example of 
national virtue would justly subject them to the imputa- 
tion of brutality. He declared, and probably with jus- 
tice, that a play like Voltaire's would not be tolerated 
8 113 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

upon the English stage ; that a scene which made war 
upon human nature and violated the fundamental obliga- 
tions of being in behalf of a collateral virtue, would be 
looked upon with horror and hatred.^ He was equally 
dissatisfied with Shakespeare's treatment of the same 
theme. The deficiency of that dramatist in what he 
called art was as objectionable to him as to Voltaire 
himself. The gross violation of the unities in ' Julius 
Csesar ' was a fault that could not be condoned. But 
Hill's feelings were outraged above all by the fact that the 
man who gave to the play its title should perish when 
its performance was only about half over. " What ! " he 
wrote indignantly, " is Shakespeare's ' Csesar,' then, 
come at last to be urged as a pattern ? — a play wherein 
he (the greatest and most renowned of mankind) sus- 
tains not so much as a third-rate figure, and yet gives 
his name to the tragedy ! But such always were, and 
forever will be, the effects of an implicit idolatry," ^ 

The feeling which Hill here expressed has been by no 
means confined to him. It has troubled many. Much 
elaborate justification of the propriety of the present 
title, much elaborate explanation of how it came to exist, 
would have been rendered unnecessary, had Shakespeare 
only chosen to call his play ' Brutus ' instead of ' Julius 
Csesar.' The reasons which have been advanced for his 
doing as he did belong to the class of explanations 
which do not explain. The real reason is not far to 
seek. There is everything to indicate that Shakespeare 
was largely indifferent to the names his plays should 

1 Hill's Works, vol. i. p. 280. 

2 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 9. 

114 



'THE DEATH OF CJESAR' 

bear. If a satisfactory one did not present itself at the 
moment, he was little disposed to spend time and 
thought in devising one merely to have it specially 
appropriate. In the tragedies it is usually suggested by 
the leading character. But the comedies rarely admit of 
this easy solution of the difficulty of designation. As a 
consequence it is in but few instances — such as ' Meas- 
ure for Measure ' and ' Tlie Taming of the Shrew ' — 
that we find a title which answers accurately to the 
leading motive of the play. Of the fact itself notice 
was early taken. On January 6, 1663, Pepys went to 
see 'Twelfth Night' acted. He found it but a silly 
piece ; and more than that, it was not related at all to the 
name and tlie day. 

Pepys could easily have extended his strictures on 
this account to others of Shakespeare's works. ' As You 
Like It' is a title wiiicli will serve for any piece that 
was ever written. ' All 's Well that Ends Well ' is a 
phrase which would fittingly designate the larger num- 
bers of existing comedies. ' The Winter's Tale ' ' Mid- 
summer Night's Dream,' ' Love's Labor 's Lost ' could be 
applied to scores of dramas with as much propriety as to 
the ones so-called. ' Much Ado about Nothing,' again, 
is so far from being appropriate, that in any natural 
sense of the words, the title is a misnomer. The much ado 
tliat was made was so far from being about nothing that 
it was an ado about something of prime importance in 
the lives of the principal characters. There is hardly 
any escape from the view that Shakespeare was either 
indisposed to trouble himself about finding a specially 
suitable name for his plays, or was unwilling to give 

115 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

them such as would in any way indicate clearly their 
character. It is more in accordance with the evidence 
to accept the former supposition, — to believe that if the 
title did not suggest itself at once, he adopted any 
that would serve the purpose, however indifferently. In- 
deed the second title to ' Twelfth Night ' — that is, ' What 
You Will ' — indicates a certain impatience with the 
necessity of bothering himself about a matter which he 
regarded as of extremely little importance. He practi- 
cally says to reader or spectator, " If you don't like the 
name I have given this piece, have it any name you 
please." A like feeling of indifference existed in all 
probability when he had completed the play now under 
discussion. He called it after the greatest of the liistor- 
ical characters who appear in it, without pausing to con- 
sider that the real hero of the tragedy is an altogether 
different person. 

Dissatisfied with Shakespeare, more dissatisfied with 
Voltaire, Hill set out to produce a play on the same 
subject, which, while following to a certain extent the 
latter's plot, should develop it in accordance with Eng- 
lish good-nature — that (![uality which, it was boasted, 
other nations were so far from possessing that they 
lacked for it the name. He adopted the same relation- 
ship of father and son between Csesar and Brutus. He 
introduced several other incidents of Voltaire's play. 
He worked long and assiduously at the production of 
his piece, which was styled ' Roman Revenge.' He 
bored Pope with it. He purposed to dedicate it to 
Bolingbroke, who professed himself much honored by 
the proposed compliment as well as impressed by the 

116 



*TUE DEATH OF CjESAR' 

perusal of the piece itself. But the theatrical managers 
of the day were not impressed. Hill could not succeed 
in getting his play acted on the London stage, noi'was 
it ever published till some years after his death. Its 
perusal gives one respect for the judgment which re- 
fused to accept it for representation. It has about 
every fault which can be found in Voltaire's play with- 
out any of its merits. The incidents which Hill added 
to the plot contributed to its absurdity, but not to its 
interest. But its most distinguishing characteristic is 
its unrelieved prosiness. The steady stream of plati- 
tudes, which pours through it without restraint and 
without cessation, makes this play one of the most 
wearisome to be found in that unrivalled collection of 
the dramatically tedious which we call eighteenth- 
century tragedy. Even he who has, in a measure, been 
prepared for its perusal by frequent previous struggles 
with pieces of a similar character, will find it difficult 
not to be overcome by its deadly dulness. The fact of 
its non-appearance during its author's lifetime prevented 
the publication of a letter addressed to Voltaire which 
Hill had contemplated prefixing to the work when 
printed. In it he had purposed to vindicate the char- 
acter of his countrymen from the French author's rep- 
resentation of it ; to protest against the assumption that 
a model of the taste of the English could be found in a 
wretch who persists in the murder of his father, after 
being convinced that he stood toward him in the rela- 
tion of a son.^ 

1 Hill's Works, vol. ii. p. 10. 



117 



CHAPTER VI 

MACBETH AND MAHOMET, HAMLET AND SEMIRAMIS 

It was in his play dealing with the death of Caesar 
that Voltaire attempted to introduce upon the French 
stage some of the actual characteristics of the romantic 
drama, as well as some which he fancied to belong to it. 
It was a venturesome undertaking ; he speedily saw that 
it was so. He therefore did not commit himself too 
fully and too far. Two kinds of assertion he was in 
the habit of making about the experiment, according as 
he sought to disarm the hostility of critics, or to arouse 
the enthusiasm of partisans. If the work were attacked, 
he maintained that it was an honest aim on his part to 
enlarge the circle of knowledge by making his country- 
men familiar with the taste of another people. If it 
were approved, he said that it was designed to extend 
the boundaries of the French drama by contributing to 
it certain features which the experience of another race 
had shown to be desirable and effective. These varying 
reasons for his action he gave as he found it expedient 
to apologize for his course, or to assume credit for it. 

In the case of this particular play he was accordingly 
willing — at least at the outset^ to acknowledge his 
indebtedness to Shakespeare. Two of the scenes he 
professed to have taken directly from ' JuUus Caesar.' 

118 



MACBETH AND MAHOMET 

It is the only time in Voltaire's career in which he vol- 
untarily admitted any specific obligation on his part to 
the English dramatist. One other was reluctantly wrung 
from him ; but it was so introduced that he who was 
unacquainted with the original was little likely to sup- 
pose that what he saw was borrowed. Outside of these 
two instances there is not a line in his writings which 
indicates that a single dramatic situation in his plays 
had been even remotely suggested by anything he had 
met with in the works of the author by whom he was 
alternately attracted and repelled. The course of con- 
cealment which he had practised in the case of Zaire he 
persistently followed. Yet no dramatist ever owed to 
another a more distinctive obligation than Voltaire did 
to Shakespeare in the tragedy to which we now come. 

In August, 1742, his play of Le Fanatisme^ ou Mahomet 
le Prophete was brought out at the French theatre. It 
had been written several years previously ; it had, more- 
over been acted with success in a provincial city. It 
was produced at Paris a few months before Merope. 
After running three nights it was withdrawn in conse- 
quence of the opposition of a powerful cabal which 
pretended that the sentiments expressed in it imperilled 
the safety of both church and state. A number of years 
after, it was revived and met with great success. Noth- 
ing shows much more clearly the wretched repression 
under which literature then languished in France than 
the banishment of this piece from the boards. All sorts 
of pretexts for so doing were trumped up then, and have 
not unfrequently been repeated since. Had the author- 
ship come from another soui'ce, at least from an admit- 

119 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

tedly orthodox source, the work would have met with 
no hostility. The suspicions entertained of it, the im- 
putations brought against it, were based upon inferences 
drawn from the supposed beliefs of its writer, and not 
from anything contained in the play itself. Over his 
opponents Voltaire gained, a few years after, a triumph 
which at the time afforded liim infinite satisfaction. He 
received permission to dedicate the work to the pope 
himself. By parading this privilege at the beginning 
of the play when printed, with the interchange of epis- 
tolary compliments that went on between him and the 
head of the church, he confounded the enemies who 
professed to find in the piece ideas dangerous both to 
religion and civil government. 

Not that the work was calculated to promote personal 
piety or to advance the interests of the church. Of 
any tendency of that sort it could hardly be accused, 
though it represented Mahomet in the most odious 
light. To a modern man, in truth, its most striking 
feature is the picture it gives of the limitations of its 
author. There are characteristics of human nature 
which Voltaire could not comprehend. There are 
mysteries of the spirit into which he could not pene- 
trate. Of the weak side of faith, of its narrowness, 
of its intolerance, of its persecuting spirit, he had the 
clearest apprehension. And as he saw it distinctly, he 
exposed it relentlessly. On the other hand, of its strong 
side he had no conception whatever. He lacked not 
only the appreciation of it which comes from knowledge, 
but the deeper insight that springs from sympathy. 
Of the uplifting power of faith, of the enthusiasm 

120 



MACBETH AND MAHOMET 

and energy it arouses, of the lofty determination it 
inspires that what ought to be is to be, he saw nothing 
because he felt nothing. He could in all sincerity as- 
sume that a man could set on foot a great religious 
movement destined to affect the lives of hundi'eds of 
millions, without believing in himself or in his mission. 
But his lack of spiritual insight was purely personal. 
It furnished no justification for the outcry which was 
raised against his piece, and drove it temporarily from 
the stage. 

In this play occurs a direct imitation of Shakespeare. 
It consists of the circumstances attending the death of 
one of its characters, Zopire, the venerable sheik of 
Mecca. Seide, under the influence of fanaticism, mur- 
ders the aged ruler for whom he feels an instinctive 
veneration. After the deed has been committed, he 
is horrified to learn that it is his own father to whom 
he has given the death-stroke. Joined with him is the 
heroine Palmire, half dissuading her lover from the 
perpetration of the crime for which her hand is to be 
his reward, half consenting to the act which is to fulfil 
the great desire of her life. No one familiar with 
English literature, who reads the conversations preced- 
ing and following the assassination, can fail to be 
struck by the evident attempt to reproduce the effect 
of the tremendous situations in ' Macbeth ' which pre- 
cede and follow the assassination of Duncan. All the 
accessories to the scene which are found in the one 
play are introduced into the other, so far as the differ- 
ence of plot allows them to be employed. It was the 
appearance of Lady Macbeth in the English tragedy, 

121 



SHAKESPEARE- AND VOLTAIRE 

it was the part she played in it, which led Voltaire to 
make Palmire an associate in the murder. The con- 
versation between husband and wife, just before the 
commission of the crime, suggested the conversation 
between the lovers. But whatever force exists in the 
scenes as depicted by Voltaire, it is felt to be attenuated 
and feeble the moment it is contrasted with the terrible 
grandeur of those in the original. In them the inten- 
sity of the excitement reaches almost to the point of 
pain. Even greater is the inferiority on the side of 
dramatic art. In the English play the presence of Lady 
Macbeth is essential. In the French the presence of 
Palmire is a necessity of the theatre, and not of nature. 
What is the inevitable demand of art in the one, in the 
other is the result of artifice. 

The inferiority of Voltaire is even more noticeable 
in the attempt he makes to reproduce the tragic horror 
of the situation which follows Macbeth's return from 
the commission of the crime. The interview which 
then takes place between the husband and the wife, till 
it is broken off by the knocking at the gate, stands out 
conspicuously even among the powerful scenes of Shake- 
speare for the depth and painfulness of its thrilhng 
character. It is more appalling than the murder itself. 
The shuddering awe it inspires is felt as profoundly, 
even in the mere reading of it, as if we had been very 
partakers in the act of which it is the outcome. Vol- 
taire was too keenly susceptible to the influence of the 
tragic scene not to feel its power. He sought, as far 
as in him lay, to reproduce the agitation of the actors. 
He imitated not merely the matter but the manner. In 

122 



MACBETH AND MAHOMET 

his work as in the original is found the broken utterance, 
the abrupt inquiry, the startled comment. The attempt 
was indeed the same ; the result was something alto- 
gether different. The effect was one, in truth, which it 
was only in the power of a genius as mighty as Shake- 
speare's own to produce ; and he himself produced it 
but once. There was another reason beside the lack 
of equal genius. At least it may be permitted the 
members of an English-speaking race to believe that 
no effect of that kind could be produced in the measure 
employed in French tragedy. In this the restraint of 
ryme, the regular recurrence of like sounds, however 
fitted to impart pleasure, are little calculated to cause 
impressions of terror. It is in scenes like these of 
' Macbeth ' that we, at all events, recognize the capa- 
bilities and possibilities which lie in blank verse as an 
instrument of expression. 

It never struck Voltaire as worth while to do so much 
as refer to the source from which the corresponding scenes 
in Maliomet were taken. It shows the ignorance of 
Shakespeare in France upon which he could reckon then, 
that he rrever felt it necessary or expedient anywhere 
in his voluminous writings, to make even the slightest 
allusion to this most palpable of imitations. The Eng- 
lish, however, recognized it and announced it at once. At 
a little later period when their feelings had become some- 
what embittered by Voltaire's attacks upon their stage, 
no obligation of his to the English dramatist was flung 
more frequently in his face than his calm appropriation 
without acknowledgment of the scenes in ' Macbeth.' It 
seems to have made a far greater impression upon their 

123 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

minds than the more extended imitation of ' Othello ' 
which is found in Zaire. Of the charges of plagiarism 
brought by them against Voltaire it is certainly the 
one much the most frequently specified. Yet though 
so familiar to Englishmen, so constantly made the sub- 
ject of animadversion, the obligation was apparently 
never recognized at the time by Voltaire's countrymen. 
In truth they seem none too well acquainted with it 
now. So far as I have observed, much more attention 
has been called to an imputed imitation of Lillo's 
' London Merchant,' in which George Barnwell mur- 
ders his uncle, but sees him casting an eye of love upon 
him while breathing his last. The dying words of 
Zopire to the son by whose hand he has fallen, the 
blessing he gives, may have been suggested by this 
incident. But it could easily have originated independ- 
ently. Nor as an appropriation is it of much importance 
in itself. As contrasted with the debt due to ' Macbeth,' 
it is of no importance at all. 

To another imitation of Shakespeare there has already 
been a reference. In his play of Erijyhyle, fired by the 
example of ' Hamlet,' Voltaire had ventured upon the 
expedient of introducing a ghost. In the state of feeling 
which then existed in France in regard to dramatic art, 
this under any circumstances would have been a hazard- 
ous experiment. But it was then made doubly hazard- 
ous by the mechanical difficulties which stood in the 
way of creating the illusion necessary to produce the 
desired effect. The French theatre still retained the bar- 
barous practice of allowing seats upon the stage. It 
was in fact never done away with until 1759. A ghost, 

124 



HAMLET AND S^MIRAMIS 

therefore, could hardly be expected to create much of an 
impression when the distinct corporeal substance of the 
actor taking the part, would have to be in such close 
proximity to the young men of fashion seated upon the 
stage that it was likely to brush the powder from their 
hair. Still Voltaire was willing to run the risk ; and 
in 1732 the tragedy of Eriphyle had been brought out. 
In it the shade of Amphiaraus appears, forbids the 
approaching nuptials of his wife and his son Alcmseon, 
and orders the latter to avenge his death at the hands of 
his mother. But the time was not ripe for a scene of 
such a character to succeed in France ; and the play was 
withdrawn both from the boards and the press. 

Still, the impression made upon him b}'" the appearance 
of the ghost in ' Hamlet,' which he had witnessed dur- 
ing his stay in England, did not wear off. It haunted 
his memory. Not merely did the effectiveness of the 
scene itself appeal to him ; he had been struck by the 
impression invariably produced by it upon the spec- 
tators. Why could he not achieve the same results 
upon the French stage ? The first trial had not been so 
much of a failure that there was not a fair prospect of 
success in a second. He determined to renew the ex- 
periment. Accordingly, in 1748 his tragedy of Semiramis 
was brought out. It was built upon essentially the same 
lines as that of Eriphyle. The ghost of Ninus replaced 
that of Amphiaraus, and the role of Alcmseon was taken 
by Ninias. Again the experiment failed for the time 
being. The success achieved by the play was only tol- 
erable. When it was revived at later periods, especially 
after the stage had been cleared, it took strong hold of 

125 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

the public favor, and during the eighteenth century 
was one of Voltaire's frequently acted pieces. 

In some verses written to be delivered before the rep- 
resentation of Eriphyle, Voltaire had had something to 
say of the attempt to reproduce in it the terror of the 
ancient stage. From the grave of iEschylus, he observed, 
had come a new birth of daring experiment. He was 
trying to convey the impression that he had borrowed 
the idea from the shade of Darius which appears in the 
Persce. Of Shakespeare, who was responsible for the 
only really daring experiment in the piece, he took care 
to say nothing. But when Semiramis came out, this 
manner of proceeding was no longer possible. A trans- 
lation in part of ' Hamlet ' had appeared but a short 
time before. In it the interview between the hero of 
the piece and the ghost of his father had been rendered 
in full. No longer, therefore, could the appeal be made 
to Greek tragedy alone. In the prefatory discourse to 
the play as printed, the authority of Shakespeare was 
adduced for the introduction of the ghost. With it he 
tells us that the best judges in England had been pro- 
foundly impressed — the best judges, it is almost need- 
less to add, being those who were most offended with the 
irregularities of their ancient drama. 

But even here he was careful not to make his obliga- 
tion to Shakespeare prominent. It was not the authority 
of the English dramatist which he put forward as the 
main defence for the course he^ had himself adopted. 
That was in fact merely incidental. He based it upon 
the ground that in representing the manners of the past 
he had also a right to represent its behefs. Antiquity 

126 



HAMLET AND SI^ MIR A MIS 

accepted the possibility of apparitions. In a scene which 
is laid in antiquity ghosts accordingly can be introduced 
with propriety. Furthermore he took occasion in this 
same preface to speak depreciatingly of the author whose 
action had suggested to him the particular novelty which 
he had introduced upon the French stage. He gave an 
account of the plot of ' Hamlet ' which it dignifies too 
much to call a travesty. The contemporary English 
assailants of Voltaire used to insist that any obli-- 
gation he was under to Shakespeare was invariably 
repaid on the spot by systematic misrepresentation and 
detraction. His thefts, they said, could always be de- 
tected by the cloud of calumnies with which they were 
sought to be covered. It must be confessed that his 
remarks upon ' Hamlet,' as we shall see later, furnished 
a good deal of justification for the charge. 

All this elaborate argumentation in defence of his 
course was shattered to pieces a few years later by Les- 
sing.^ This critic, while not opposing, while even up- 
holding the introduction of apparitions into modern 
plays, exposed the futility of the reasoning by which 
Voltaire had sought to justify it. In stage representa- 
tion it is not what people believe in the past in which 
the scene is laid that is to be considered. It is what 
will affect the spectators in the present. The dramatist 
is not a mere painter of manners of remote generations. 
It is the living audience of to-day that he must have in 
his eye. A stage representation which makes as its 
main object a picture of how men once thought and felt 
and acted, may serve to gratify a temporary curiosity, 

1 Hamburgische Dramaturgie , No. XI, June 11, 1767. 

127 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

but it will never awaken permanent interest. Not such 
should be the object of the playwright's ambition. His 
should be the poet's aim to move men. It is not his 
business to take the part of an antiquary for the sake 
of instructing them. More damaging, however, than his 
criticism of the reasons which Voltaire had alleged for 
his action were his strictures upon the circumstances 
attending the appearance of the shade of Ninus. His 
main point was the very just one that if a ghost is 
introduced at all, it is bound to be introduced in accord- 
ance with the existing beliefs of men about ghosts. 
Tills fundamental condition Shakespeare had fulfilled ; 
Voltaire had not. The matter is so important that it is 
worth while to give expansion to the criticism and 
comparison which Lessing did little more than outline. 
For it marks with peculiar effectiveness the distinction 
between the art of Shakespeare and the art of Voltaire, 
It indicates in a way not to be gainsaid the superiority 
of the former to the latter in that fidelity of representa- 
tion which holds the mirror up to nature. 

Let us compare the two portra3^als. In ' Hamlet ' the 
appearance of the ghost is in full harmony with the beliefs 
which during modern times at least have gathered about 
visitants from the other world, and even at the present 
day affect men to a greater or less extent. No alien sights 
or scenes distract our attention from the interview that 
takes place between the living and the dead. The 
apparition comes in the silence of the night. He is 
clad from head to foot in the armor in which he appeared 
on the battle-field. He marches by the terrified senti- 
nels with slow and stately steps. He speaks but to 

128 



HAMLET AND S^MTRAMIS 

one, and to him he speaks when alone. He awes the 
spectators of the play, as in the play itself he awes those 
to whom he appears. The stillness of the hour, the 
loneliness of the place, the startling news imparted, the 
solemn injunction imposed, are all in conformity with 
beliefs which we have inherited about the spirit world, 
and with impressions which but few of us are able to 
shake off entirely. All this is to say that the ghost of 
Hamlet appears to us under recognized ghostly condi- 
tions. Furthermore, he is a being who is something more 
than a character necessary to the business of the play. 
He interests us for himself. 

On the other hand, all these conditions for the proper 
portrayal of apparitions are violated by Voltaire. To 
hardly a single one even of our conceptions about them 
and their behavior does he make conform the spirit that 
he evokes. In certain ways the discrepancy between 
our beliefs and its conduct is extreme. Ghosts, it is 
to be remarked, have always been distinguished for their 
aversion to society. It is not in the midst of crowds 
that they intrude themselves. They are almost in- 
variably in the habit of appearing to but a single person. 
From the point of view of the sceptic they further 
appear rarely to the right sort of person. The difficulty 
had been foreseen by the all-observant eye of Shake- 
speare. Horatio had been unwilling to accept the story 
of the sentinels. He is convinced of their truthfulness 
only by witnessing himself the sight which upon their 
mere testimony he had refused to accept as possible. 
The dramatist himself here strained somewhat spectral 
proprieties by making his ghost appear to three ; but he 
9 129 



• SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

had taken care that the interview should be held with 
but one. It is upon these two alone that the attention 
of reader or hearer is concentrated. As Hamlet says of 
it himself, though in another sense, it is an honest ghost 
that is given us — honest, that is, from the side of 
dramatic art. But nothing of this sort can be asserted 
of the apparition which Voltaire presents. The proceed- 
ings of this being are in defiance of precedent, of tradi- 
tional beliefs, and of decorum. No ghost who had the 
slightest regard for the etiquette of the spiritual world 
would have shown himself in the midst of a crowded 
assembly. Still less would he have violated spectral 
conventions by appearing in the daytime. 

Yet these things Voltaire's ghost does without hesi- 
tation and without scruple. He selects broad daylight 
for the time of his appearance, and for the place a room 
filled with persons about to witness a marriage ceremony. 
The further conduct of his apparition is even more in 
violation of spectral good-manners. It approaches the 
vulgarity of spirit-rappings rather than the dignity of a 
messenger from the unseen world deputed to execute 
the justice of the gods. He is noisy. Groans emanating 
from the mausoleum in which lies the body of the 
murdered king is the method taken to announce earlier 
in the day that something supernatural is to happen 
later. When the ghost makes up his mind to appear 
he signalizes his intention by a clap of thunder. The 
tomb shakes, the door opens. Into the midst of the 
crowded court stalks the shade of Ninus. There he 
delivers his message. His mission done he does not 
fade away. He returns instead with slow and stately 

130 



HAMLET AND SISMIRAMTS 

steps to his tomb. He re-enters it, and the door closes 
npon him. All this is done in the sight of the multitude 
present. No properly behaved apparition ever con- 
ducted himself in this manner. Not thus act the ghosts 
whose appeai-ances have received the sanction of human 
faith or brought terror to human credulity. The effect 
produced by a performance of this character may be 
impressive ; under powerful representation, it may 
be startling ; but it is not legitimate. Voltaire's is an 
artificial and not a natural creation. Yet there is no 
question that this mechanical device, however unsuccess- 
ful at first, met later with a warm reception. Upon it 
eulogiums were lavished by some of the best critics of 
the time. They can be forgiven. They had not yet 
learned from Shakespeare what it was of the awe-inspir- 
ing and terrible which it lay in the power of the highest 
art to produce. 



131 



CHAPTER VII 

RESENTMENT OF THE ENGLISH 

For many years after Voltaire's departure from 
England there can be no question of his continuous 
popularity in that country. Undoubtedly from some of 
the opinions he expressed there was decided dissent. 
Errors of statement he had made were known and 
noticed. But there was no disposition to insist upon 
these things, and comment upon them was confined to 
private circles. Furthermore, if his observations touched 
at times the susceptibilities of the English, they could 
not fail to derive consolation from the fact that he had 
made the superiority of their institutions almost offen- 
sively prominent to the French. His admiration of 
Newton and Locke had been expressed in extravagant 
terms. No such ungrudging recognition liad indeed 
been paid to Shakespeare. His references to that author 
always went on the assumption that while he was a man 
of genius, he was also a barbarian. His comments on 
the English stage implied that under the influence of 
Shakespeare's example, it likewise continued to remain 
barbarous. But while men might not accept these 
views, they recognized his right to have them, and the 
sincerity with which he held them. It had never once 
occurred to him to doubt the immense superiority of the 

132 



RESENTMENT OF THE ENGLISH 

French stage, as represented by Corneille and Racine, 
and as lie thought in his secret heart, though he did not 
put it precisely in words, as represented by Voltaire 
more than either. But the expression of his deprecia- 
tory estimate of English practices was not made offen- 
sive ; and as praise of some sort was constantly mingled 
with his blame there was little disposition to take 
offence. 

The English, moreover, had been quick to recognize 
Voltaire's indebtedness to Shakespeare. They were not 
in the least disposed to resent it or even his failure to 
acknowledge it. To them it seemed a thing perfectly 
understood on both sides. No one then deemed it 
a necessity for him to specify it, any more than one 
would now think of putting between quotation marks 
a phrase or verse from the Bible. No plagiarism can 
be imputed where everybody is expected to recognize 
at once the source from which anything is drawn. The 
English were gratified therefore to witness the impres- 
sion produced upon the most eminent Frenchman of 
the time by their favorite dramatist. Borrowing from 
him was nothing but a tribute to his greatness. The 
feeling is shown in Gibber's prologue to ' Zara ' already 
quoted. There it is distinctly implied that he owed 
his success to Shakespeare. But while the fact is 
asserted, there is nothing unkindly in its presentation. 
In a similar way the prologue to Miller's adaptation of 
Mahomet — which was brought out in April, 1744 — 
conveys the same impression. It is in these lines that 
Voltaire is represented as drawing his inspiration from 
the English dramatist : 

133 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

" Britons, these numbers to yourselves you owe ; 
Voltaire hath strength to shoot in Shakespeare's bow : 
Fame led him at his Hippocrene to drink, 
And taught to wi'ite with nature as to think : 
With English freedom English wit he knew, 
And from the inexhausted stream profusely drew. 
Cherish the noble bard yourselves have made, 
Nor let the frauds of France steal all our trade." 

It is also to be kept in mind that Voltaire himself 
could not at the outset have supposed that his opinions 
about Shakespeare were liable to run counter to the 
opinions generally held in England by the educated 
class, and certainly not to those held by the men he 
most admired. The views he expressed were largely 
the views of the literary circle with which he had come 
into immediate contact during his stay in London. 
The utterances he heard in private were pretty surely 
much more outspoken than those which he read in 
print ; for, in spite of the intellectual superiority it 
assumed, this select class stood in a good deal of awe 
of that great public, whose loyalty to Shakespeare had 
never been shaken and could not be too defiantly out- 
raged. Those having the poorest opinion of his works 
accordingly hesitated to express with too much freedom 
their real views. In many instances they had too little 
familiarity with his writings to form views worth ex- 
pressing. By the accident of editorship Pope had be- 
come acquainted with all his plays. He publicly avowed 
and to some extent exhibited a good deal of veneration. 
Yet Pope was capable of saying in private that it was 
mighty simple in Rowe to write in his time a play 
professedly in Shakespeare's style, that is, professedly 

134 



RESENTMENT OF THE ENGLISH 

in ths style of a bad age.^ Such were largely the senti- 
ments of the set with whose members Voltaire came in 
contact. Swift earned the distinction of a double igno- 
rance by fancying that the Wife of Bath was a character 
in one of Shakespeare's dramas.^ It was not unreason- 
able, therefore, for a foreigner to assume that his point 
of view would be that generally taken by the educated 
class in England ; for the opinions he heard expressed 
were those entertained by the men of that country who 
were in many cases reckoned as its intellectual leaders. 

On this point he was destined to be speedily unde- 
ceived. In the essay on English tragedy, contained in 
his ' Philosophical Letters,' he had observed that time, 
which alone is capable of establishing the reputation 
of authors, serves at length to consecrate their very 
defects. Of this truth Shakespeare had, in his opinion, 
furnished a glaring illustration. The extravagant pas- 
sages and the bombast which abounded in his writings, 
had in the course of a hundred and fifty years acquired 
a title to pass for the true sublime. There was a period 
during which Voltaire seems to have cherished a hope 
that he himself could overthrow this prevailing delu- 
sion ; certainly that he could bring efficient and perhaps 
decisive aid to those who were striving to bring about 
the triumph of true taste as represented by the French 
stage. The dedicatory epistle prefixed to Zaire urges 
upon the countrymen of Falkener the necessitj^ of re- 
forming their tragedy. At the close of the second dedi- 

^ Spence's Anecdotes, etc., Singer's ed. 1858, p. 151. 
2 Letter of Nov. 20, 1729, to Gay ; Elwin and Courthope's Pope, vol. 
vii. p. 167. 

135 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

catory epistle to the same English friend he reiterated 
his warnings. " You ought," he wrote, " to submit to 
the rules of our theatre, as we ought to embrace your 
philosophy. The art of pleasing belongs to the French ; 
the art of thinking is yours." 

But if he entertained any expectation of success in 
this crusade, he realized more and more its futility, 
as time went on. Interest in Shakespeare, great as 
it had been, was steadily increasing ; admiration was 
steadily growing. Before the middle of the century 
five men, two of eminence, had brought out successive 
editions of his plays. A number of similar undertakings 
were already promised or threatened. Comments and 
commentaries were multiplying on every side. Criti- 
cisms were put forth in profusion ; even if at all hostile, 
they evinced the existence of the interest that prevailed. 
The admiration, too, as it became more widespread, was 
becoming distinctly more aggressive. The proclamation 
of Shakespeare's superiority to all other dramatists, 
ancient or modern, grew louder and more vehement. 
That he was superior to Corneille and Racine was 
hardly thought worth asserting. It was self-evident. 
If a Frenchman believed otherwise, it was due to affec- 
tation on his part or to ignorance. Views of this 
nature were stoutly maintained even by those who did 
not question the doctrine, still accepted by many, that 
Shakespeare's productions abounded in gross absurdities. 

Voltaire could not and did not shut his eyes to the 
increasing strength of this heresy, as he ^ncerely deemed 
it. Whatever hope he may at one time have entertained 
of seeing England converted to what he regarded as the 

136 



RESENTMENT OF THE ENGLISH 

orthodox dramatic faith, disappeared altogether. A few 
choice spirits hke Bolingbroke, Chesterfield, and Hume 
might rise superior to the taste of the generality. But such 
men as these were exceptional. Their influence too in 
matters of this nature was steadily diminishing, their 
small number was becoming smaller. They had never 
represented the multitude at all, they were ceasing to 
represent any considerable portion of the educated body. 
A model of pure and correct taste, the nation, according 
to Voltaire, had received in the ' Cato ' of Addison. 
But as the century advanced, it fell into disfavor. Play- 
wrights showed little disposition to conform to it, audi- 
ences exhibited for it a growing indifference. During 
the closing years of Voltaire's life it was rarely brought 
on the stage. Obviously nothing could be expected 
from a people who considered Shakespeare an improve- 
ment upon Sophocles, and who continued more than 
ever to be pleased with his barbarous scenes. 

In a letter of June, 1750, he embodied his opinion of 
the low state of the English stage, and his despair of 
ever seeing it any better. It was written in the English 
tongue to Lord Lyttelton, and is as interesting for the man- 
ner in which it is expressed as it is for its matter. " Yr 
nasion," he wrote, " two hundred years since is us'd to a 
wild scene, to a croud of tumultuous events, to an emphat- 
ical poetry mix'd with lose and comical expressions, to 
murtherss, to a lively representation of bloody deeds, to a 
kind of horrour which seems often barbarous and childish, 
all faults which never sullyd the greak, the roman, or the 
french stage ; and give me leave to say that the taste of 
y' politest countrymen in point of tragedy differs not 

137 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

much in point of tragedy from the taste of a mob at 
Bear-Garden, ' tis true we have too much of words, if 
you have too much of action, and perhaps the perfection 
of the Art should consist in a due mixture of the french 
taste and english energy." Voltaire, after this general 
statement, proceeded to drag in the everlasting Addison. 
He it was who, " warn'd often y"" nation against the cor- 
rupted state of the stage — and since he could not reform 
the genius of the country, j am affraid the contagious 
distemper is past curing." ^ 

The views expressed in this letter were by no means new. 
Voltaire's attitude towards Shakespeare and the English 
stage never really varied in its character from first to 
last. It varied distinctly, however, in its manner of 
exhibition. It assumed by degrees an aggressive, not to 
call it an offensive character. It finally awakened lively 
resentment. He had from the very outset laid a good 
deal of stress upon the inability of English dramatists to 
depict the passion of love. One reason, he tells us, that 
had been given for the fact was that it was something 
for which English audiences did not particularly care. 
But this was not the real cause. The heroes of EngUsh 
plays did not express themselves in a natural manner. 
" Our lovers," he wrote, "speak as lovers ; yours only as 
poets." It was in gallantry therefore that the French 
surpassed the English. All this he said in the first 
dedicatory epistle of Zaire. In the second he returned 
to the subject. If the introduction of love into the 
drama be a fault, it is certain that in the representa- 
tion, of the passion the French have succeeded better than 

1 Letter of May 17, 1750; in Lyttelton's Correspondence, vol. i. p. 324. 

133 



RESENTMENT OF THE ENGLISH 

all other nations, ancient and modern, put together. 
*' Love appears in our theatres," he declared, "with the 
good manners, with a delicacy, with a verity which is 
found nowhere else." He enforced the failure of the 
English in this matter by a comparison of passages from 
Dryden and Racine. If we wonder at the selection, we 
can take no exception to the particular criticism. The 
former, he observed, had put into the mouth of his 
lovers either rhetorical hyperbole or indecency. 

These remarks, however, created no feeling, and ap- 
parently no comment, at the time. It is not until a good 
while later that counter-assertion can be found expressed. 
Even then it might as well have been left unsaid ; it 
certainly cannot be deemed very convincing. Voltaire's 
ignorance of love as portrayed by Shakespeare was due to 
his ignorance of all his comedies and of some of his trag- 
edies. But in his case it can be pardoned, when we 
contrast it with the ignorance displayed by Shakes- 
peare's countrymen. In the indignant protests put forth 
later against Voltaire's assumption of the inability of 
the English to portray the passion of love, there is not, 
so far as I can discover, the slightest allusion to the 
representation of it by the greatest of their dramatists. 
There is no apparent conception of the inexhaustible 
variety of its portrayal in his writings, or of the peculiar 
delicacy and refinement with which it has been made to 
display itself. Feelings of this sort undoubtedly existed ; 
but to all appearance they were entertained privately, 
and not expressed publicly. We know that ' Romeo and 
Juliet ' was early deemed by many to convey the very 
soul of love. The man \^ho tells us this tells us also 

139 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

that he did not dare to say that the speeches in it were 
not natural, because of the offence it would give to the 
admirers of the play.^ But it is noticeable that while 
he did not venture to contradict their judgment, he did 
not confirm it. It was reserved for a foreign judge, 
more than fifty years later, in contrasting this play with 
Zaire, to assert that ' Romeo and Juliet ' was the only 
one at which love itself had ever labored.^ If English 
critics did not recognize the propriety and force of the 
delineation of the passion, as found in this tragedy, they 
were httle likely to observe the varied pictures of it 
found in other pieces, such as ' The Tempest,' ' As 
You Like it,' and ' Twelfth Night.' With these examples 
close at hand of the representation of the tenderness, 
the fervor, and the purity of love, of the portrayal of its 
spiritual side as distinguished from its sensual, EngUsh 
writers brought forward as evidence of the untruthful- 
ness of Voltaire's assertion, its representation as found in 
Otway and Rowe and Southerne. The credit of the 
attack was in consequence strengthened by the wretched- 
ness of the defence. 

It was by the preface to his tragedy of Mcrope that 
Voltaire first aroused the national indignation. That 
play had been brought out at Paris in February, 1743. 
It created a tremendous sensation; its reception the 
first night remained long famous in the annals of the 
French drama. Since the appearance of the Athalie of 
Racine it was the only tragedy which had succeeded 
without containing a love-story. Voltaire, who had been 

1 Gildon's Remarks on the Plays of Shakespeare (1710). 
^ Lessing's Hamburgische Dramaturgie, No. XV., June 19, 1767. 
140 



RESENTMENT OF THE ENGLISH 

well aware that it was a good deal of a risk, was justly 
elated over his success. To the play when printed he 
prefixed an. essay in the shape of an epistle to the Marquis 
Scipio Maffei who had written the piece, with the same 
title, upon which his own had been founded. In it he 
discussed particularly the subject of love in tragedy. In 
his opinion it ought to be everything, or it ought not to 
appear at all. In the course of this letter he took occa- 
sion to make some reflections upon the English stage 
and the English people. With his characteristic inability 
to correct an incorrect statement, he repeated his previ- 
ous assertion that the dramatic writers of that nation 
had a custom of finishing their acts with similes. It is 
fair to say that he had learned a httle in the meantime ; 
in consequence, while he did not make his observation 
true, he made it less untrue. The remark underwent 
a slight jnodification. Previously it had been implied 
that the custom was universal ; now it was said that it 
was almost universal. 

It was, however, no such petty misrepresentation of 
fact that disturbed the English. The remarks to which 
they took exception were of a totally different nature. ^ 
A drama on the subject of Merope had been brought 
out at London in 1731. Into it a love-intrigue had 
been introduced. This play, unsuccessful at the time, 
and long forgotten, was here made by Voltaire the occa- 
sion of a general attack upon their productions in 
tragedy. " Since the reign of Charles II.," he wrote, 
" love has taken possession of the English stage, and it 
must be said that there is no nation that has painted 
the passion so badly." This cannot be called agreeable 

141 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

criticism. What followed was much worse. Though 
this play of ' Merope ' had failed, he observed that the 
wonder really was that it had ever been thought worthy 
of representation at all. It was a proof that their 
theatre had not yet attained refinement. " It seems," he 
continued, " that the same cause which deprives the 
English of genius for painting and music, has taken 
away from them also that for tragedy. That isle, which 
has produced the greatest philosophers in the world, is 
not so fertile for the fine arts. If the English do not 
apply themselves seriously to follow the precepts of 
their excellent countrymen, Addison and Pope, they 
will not approach other nations in matters of taste and 
literature." 

Voltaire in the play of Le Fanatisme, which had imme- 
diately preceded Merope, had not merely represented 
Mahomet as a conscious impostor, but as a lover, alter- 
nately ruthless and whining, who at the end bewails 
most pitifully the loss of the woman whom his machi- 
nations have caused to kill herself. Under the circum- 
stances it seemed rather unjust for him to fall foul of an 
English playwright for introducing the same passion 
into a tragedy like ' Merope.' Consistency, however, was 
not a matter to which he ever felt the necessity of paying 
heed. Nor did others seem to heed it so far as he was 
concerned. Had he here confined his attack to this 
particular writer, no one would have taken offence. 
But he had extended his censure to a whole people. 
Their incapacity for music, painting, and tragedy had 
followed upon the assertion of their incapacity to por- 
tray the passion of love. To this attack upon the nation 

142 



RESENTMENT OF THE ENGLISH 

in general he added a few years after a severe attack 
upon their favorite dramatist. In the dissertation upon 
tragedy prefixed to his Semiraviis he had justified the 
introduction of his apparition by the example of 'Hamlet,' 
and the favor those scenes in the play met with in 
which the ghost takes part. But Voltaire, whenever he 
made any use of Shakespeare, was much inclined to 
disburden his mind of the obligation he was under 
by calling him names. As the dramatist was dead, this 
course could not hurt him ; and to his own feelings it was 
a sensible relief. 

Accordingly, v/liile employing the device found in 
' Hamlet ' he went out of his way to attack ' Plamlet's ' 
creator. He was assuredly, he said, very far from justi- 
fying that tragedy of his throughout. " It is," he 
continued, " a coarse and barbarous piece, which would 
not be tolerated by the lowest rabble of France and 
Italy. In it Hamlet becomes mad in the second act, his 
mistress becomes mad in the third ; the prince kills the 
fatheir of his mistress under pretence of killing a rat,^ 
and the heroine throws herself into the river. A grave 
is dug upon the stage ; the grave-diggers indulge in 
quibbles worthy of themselves, while holding in their 
hands the skulls of the dead. Prince Hamlet replies to 

1 In comparing this translation of the passage with that made by Dr. 
Francklin, which was published in 1761, I fiud that he renders it as fol- 
lows: "The prince kills the father of his mistress, and fancies he is killing 
a rat." In a note he says that the original is croyant tuer un rat. For 
croyant the later editions, to which alone I have access,- read /e/^nan/. If 
croyant is the reading of the earlier, as seems to be no doubt the case, it 
is only another instance of the unfarailiarity of Voltaire with a plav of 
which he pretended to give an outline. The reading of Franckliu's note 
probably opened his eyes to the error. 

143 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

their abominable vulgarities by stuff not less disgusting. 
During this time one of the actors makes the conquest 
of Poland. Hamlet, his mother, and his step-father 
drink together on the stage. They sing at the table, 
they quarrel, they beat one another, they kill one another. 
One would suppose this work to be the fruit of the 
imagination of a drunken savage." 

It would be a waste of time to point out the gross 
blunders contained in this passage. To adopt its author's 
language, a misrepresentation of the play so confused 
and grotesque would certainly seem, to any one really 
famihar with it, the fruit of the imagination of a drunken 
imbecile. Those who study Voltaire carefully will see, 
in the account he gives, only another illustration of that 
distinguishing peculiarity of his mind which, when his 
memory of facts failed, enabled his imagination to go to 
its rescue and invent others to repair their loss. His 
observations, however, were not all censure. He re- 
peated his usual remark that there were beauties to be 
discovered in this drama in the midst of its terrible ex- 
travagances. " Among these gross irregularities," he 
went on to say, " which still continue to render the Eng- 
hsh stage so absurd and barbarous, there are found in 
'Hamlet,' by a singularity still greater, some sublime 
strokes worthy of the greatest geniuses. It seems as if 
nature had been pleased to bring together in the head 
of Shakespeare whatever there is most forcible and 
grand, along with whatever is of lowest and most detest- 
able that coarseness without wit can exhibit." 

The English never forgot or forgave the remarks 
found in the epistles prefixed to Merope and Semiramis. 

144 



RESENTMENT OF THE ENGLISH 

Jeffreys, whose play had been made the pretext for the 
attack, naturally retorted. In a preface to a collection 
of miscellanies, which included a reprint of his tragedy 
of ' Merope,' he charged Voltaire with plagiarizing all but 
one of the changes he had made in the Italian piece ; then, 
while abusing him personally, with having " flourished on 
them as his own." ^ But long before the publication of 
his work the wrath of the English had manifested itself. 
It is idle indeed to pretend that Voltaire's earlier depre- 
ciatory comments upon Shakespeare, though conveyed 
in more kindly terms, were relished by them generally. 
True, there was nothing he said that had not previously 
been said by themselves. The critical views he put 
forth did not differ materially from many which had been 
publicly expressed by professed admirers of the great 
dramatist. They had come in with the Restoration. 
They had met then and afterwards with wide acceptance. 
But nations, while perfectly willing to be censured by 
one of themselves, do not take kindly to the censure of 
foreigners, especially of foreigners of distinction and 
influence. Their assumed indifference speedily gives 
way to very genuine and frequently very ugly resent- 
ment. The offence in this case was aggravated by 
the knowledge that Voltaire's hostile reflections would 
travel the round of Europe, and would meet, wherever 
they went, with unhesitating acquiescence. On the other 
hand, any contrary view that would be taken in reply, 
would reach few ears but those of his own countrymen. 
These naturally needed no convincing. 

1 Page viii of Preface to ' Miscellanies in Verso and Prose,' by George 
Jeffreys, London, 1754. 

10 145 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

But in these two later instances reflections had been 
cast by him not only upon an individual but a race. 
All were alike deficient. In their secret hearts the Eng- 
lish felt sore upon the subject of music and painting. 
They could not persuade themselves that their achieve- 
ments in either had been of the very highest grade. 
They were willing to say this among themselves ; it 
was not agreeable to have it assume'd and asserted as a 
mere matter of course by a foreigner. But they were 
far from considering themselves as inferior in tragedy. 
Of their pre-eminence in that field they entertained not 
the slightest doubt. Nor did it soothe their irritated 
feehngs to be recommended to Addison. Of his ' Cato,' 
so constantly held up by Voltaire for their imitation, 
they had already had the good sense to be growing tired. 
That play indeed had never had, from the outset, any- 
thing but an artificial vitality. That it contained fine 
passages all were willing to concede ; but its cold decla- 
mation and languid action were little suited to the 
national taste. These characteristics, too, were con- 
stantly forcing themselves more and more upon their 
attention at this time, by the contrast they presented to 
the fervor and energy of Shakespeare, whose greatness 
was then producing an impression, deeper even and 
broader than before, under the wonderful acting of 
Garrick. 

From this time on Voltaire met with scant courtesy 
from many English writers. His repute and authority 
distinctly declined. This is far from implying that he 
did not continue to have in that country a body of 
admirers and followers. These, as was natural, con- 

146 



RESENTMENT OF THE ENGLISH 

sisted largely of those who entertained the views about 
Shakespeare and the drama which he expressed, and 
would have entertained them, had he never uttered a 
word. Still, it contributed a good deal to their comfort 
and credit that their opinions were the opinions of the 
foremost man of letters in all Europe. To be sure, they 
were in England a feeble folk as contrasted with the 
hosts holding similar behefs on the Continent ; but they 
made up to a certain extent for their lack of numbers by 
superiority of attitude. Their taste was better than 
that of the general public. On their side was the wis- 
dom of the ancients, and with the partial exception of 
their own country, the practice of the moderns ; at their 
head was the greatest of living literary authorities. A 
representative of this class was Chesterfield. He not 
only agreed with Voltaire in most of his views, but in all 
sincerity regarded the Henriade as a greater epic than 
the ' Iliad.' It must be conceded that there is something 
cruel in the vengeance which Shakespeare invariably 
takes upon his undervaluers. Wise and unwise alike 
fall under the rod. Neither station nor abilit}^ can 
exempt the detractor from paying the same distressful 
penalty. Chesterfield thought the Henriade the greatest 
of epics. Hume found the 'Epigoniad' of Wilkie a 
wonderful production, full of sublimity and genius, and 
taking rank as the second poem of its kind in the 
English language. 

But though he did not lose his hold over the select 
few, by the mass of educated men a distinct depreciation 
of Voltaire was henceforth manifested even when hos- 
tility was not. One of the most common forms in which 

147 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

it was shown was in the charge of plagiarism. His in- 
debtedness to Shakespeare had been recognized from 
the very beginning ; but with the single exception of 
Hill's remarks in the case of Brutus^ tliere had been 
nothing disagreeable about its utterance. All this was 
now clianged. The obligations of Voltaire to the great 
dramatist, always visible to the English, however hidden 
from the French, were pointed out, after this, not for 
the sake of approving his judgment, but of emphasizing 
his ingratitude. He was constantly taunted with his 
indebtedness to the man whom he first plundered and 
then reviled. It is not worth while to give up space to 
the words of anonymous writers who from this time to 
the end of the century vented their sentiments or their 
spleen on tlie subject in the periodical literature of the 
da}'. The number of these was legion. But the spirit 
that animated them, the opinions they expressed can be 
gathered from the writings of authors, then if not now 
of some repute, who published under their own names. 

A very general feeling which early came to prevail 
among the English, was expressed by Foote, at the time 
he was setting out on his theatrical career. In 1747 he 
brought out a pamphlet on Roman and English comedy. 
In the course of it he attacked Voltaire, though that 
author had apparently little to do with his subject. It 
is in these words that he gave vent to the indignation 
which the preface to Merope had already succeeded in 
inspiring. " Can our contempt and resentment," he 
wrote, " be too strongly expressed against that insolent 
French panegyrist who first denies Shakespeare almost 
every dramatic excellence, and then, in his next play, 

148 



RESENTMENT OF THE ENGLISH 

pilfers from him almost every capital scene. Let those 
who want to be informed of this man and this truth, 
read the Mahomet of Voltaire and compare it with the 
' Macbeth ' of Shakespeare ; to this add (if you have 
patience) a perusal of his letters ; ^ you will then have at 
one view the Zoilus and the plagiary, the carping, super- 
ficial critic and the low, paltry thief." 

Resentment so expressed is hardly entitled to the epi- 
thet of restrained. Yet imputations of the same sort, 
though less offensively put, can be found in the writings 
of men who had a genuine admiration for Voltaire, and 
were largely under the influence of his opinions. The 
dramatist, Arthur Murphy, had received a good share 
of his education in France. He had inevitably imbibed 
many of the views about the drama there prevalent. In 
1759 he brought out at Drury Lane an adaptation of the 
Orphelin de la Chine. To the printed play he appended 
a letter addressed to Voltaire personally. In it he 
defended the very great deviations from his original 
which he had introduced; but throughout he spoke of 
the author himself in terms of highest deference and 
fidmiration. The sincerity of his feelings there is no 
reason to question. But while acknowledging his own 
obligations to the French writer, he took none the less 
care to insist upon the French writer's obligations to 
the English dramatist. Using the phrase in which Dry- 
den had pointed out Ben Jonson's imitations of the 
ancients, he remarked that he also had tracked Voltaire 
in the snow of Shakespeare. "The snow of Shake- 
speare," he added, " is but a cold expression ; but per- 

1 These must be the Lettres philosophiques. 
149 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

haps it will be more agreeable to you than a word of 
greater energy, that should convey a full idea of the 
astonishing powers of that great man ; for we islanders 
have remarked of late that M. de Voltaire has a partic- 
ular satisfaction in descanting on the faults of the most 
wonderful genius that ever- existed since Homer; inso- 
much that a very ingenious gentleman of my acquaint- 
ance tells me that whenever you treat the English bard 
as a drunken savage in your avant propos^ he always 
deems it a sure prognostic that your play is the better 
for him." 

But the change of attitude which the English under- 
went is perhaps best exemplified in Aaron Hill. Be- 
tween him and Voltaire mutual compliments had been 
exchanged. But after the publication of Merope — 
which he himself was to bring on the English stage — 
Hill looked with jaundiced eyes upon everything done 
by the man whose interests he had once professed the 
utmost solicitude to advance. It colored his view of 
things to which he ought to have felt indifference. In 
1745, for instance, Voltaire, then at the court of France, 
had dashed off a poem celebrating the victory of Fon- 
tenoy. Whatever opinion we may now have of its 
merits or defects, every one will concede that it was an 
exceedingly natural thing for a man in his position to 
do. It could not justly have been resented by a personal 
enemy belonging to the beaten side. But the comment 
of Hill upon it in a private letter is interesting, not for 
any importance it has in itself, not even for the exem- 
plification it furnishes of his peculiar turgid style, but 
as an evidence of the hostility which Voltaire had now 

150 



RESENTMENT OF THE ENGLISH 

succeeded in calling down upon himself in England. It 
is of the man for the possession of whom other nations, 
he had said, were to envy France, that he speaks. " What 
a puny spume of frothiness," he wrote, " has he fermented 
his poor mite of meaning into ! The lowest depth of 
our late friend's profund wants many a thousand fathoms 
to this very bottom of all bottoms which the French- 
man's Fontenoy has plunged him into. One might pro- 
nounce him fallen below contempt, but that he aims to 
heave in his reptility ; and has diffused on others such 
a barren waste of praise as may assure himself extent 
of infamy." ^ 

The bitterness of Hill's feelings was doubtless inten- 
sified by the pessimistic views which he had come to 
take of everything. He was getting along in years. 
His life, on the whole, had been a failure. None of his 
many schemes for benefiting his country and enabling 
his countrymen to reach his own level had met with 
success. He attributed to the decadence of taste, which 
had come to prevail, the, incapacity of his contemporaries 
to prize at its true worth the inestimable jewel it was 
their good fortune to possess, and their folly not to 
appreciate. If a work like his epic of ' Gideon,' he 
wrote in 1740, met with general neglect, he would 
renounce desire of praise in such an age without a sigh.^ 
It was to posterity that he looked for recognition, for- 
getting that posterity must necessarily be so taken up 
with its own bores that only at rare intervals can a pious 

1 Letter to Mallet, July 13, 1745, Works of Aaron Hill, vol. ii., p. 250. 
" Onr late friend " is Pope. 

* Aaron Hill's Works, vol. ii., p. 286. 

151 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

pedantry be trusted to exhume even temporarily the 
extinct bores of the past. Still, though Hill had lost 
property and health, he had not lost self-confidence. At 
the very time he was expressing the views about Vol- , 
taire which have just been quoted, he was laboring at 
an adaptation of Mcrope. As early as September, 1745, 
he had it finished. The play, however, lay many years 
upon his hands before it was produced. At last Garrick 
succumbed to the pressure brought to bear upon him, 
and on the 15th of April, 1749, it was put upon the 
stage .^ There it struggled to its ninth night. 

In several ways the translation deviated from the 
work as Voltaire wrote it. Hill had designedly im- 
proved upon that author, and it must be added that he 
had done so maliciously. This we know to be true, 
for he has told us so himself. He made a frank con- 
fession of the evil motives which had led him to mortify 
the haughty Frenchman by bringing out an adaptation 
which was superior to the original. " You will receive," 
he wrote to his friend, " my ' Merope,' upon a plan as 
near Voltaire's as I could wring it with a safe conscience. 
Let me fairly own what I am truly guilty of ; I under- 
took this piece upon a motive more malignant than it 
should have been ; for I but sought to mend, with the 
bad view to mortify him. ' Indeed I wou'dn't bear 
with patience his provokingly unreasonable vanity, that 
treats it as an act of downright impudence, when Eng- 
lishmen presume genius for tragedy." ^ Voltaire made 
neither comment upon nor reply to the published out- 

' Genest's English Stage, vol. iv. p. 269. 
2 Aaron Hill's Works, vol. ii. p. 247. 
152 



RESENTMENT OF THE ENGLISH 

burst which followed. He seems to have succeeded in 
this instance in concealing his mortification. 

The state of mind exhibited by Hill in his private 
letter was displayed much more fully in the advertise- 
ment to the reader which stands as a preface to his 
' Merope ' as printed. The English, we are there told, 
were partial to even the defects and levities of the 
French ; while the latter in their turn lacked gratitude 
to pay a like civility due to the best qualities of the 
former. France was so unsatisfied with her ambition 
for the monopoly of empire that she sought to extend 
it to supremacy in wit and learning. This was espe- 
cially true of Voltaire. Some of his pieces, we are told 
by the indignant Englishman, " are so swelled with 
this presumptuous pufiiness, that I am forced into abate- 
ments of the disposition, I once felt, to look upon him 
as a generous thinker. So much over-active sensibility 
to his own country's claims : with so unfeeling a stu- 
pidity in judging the pretensions of his neighbors, 
might absolve all indignation short of gross indecency, 
towards one who has not scrupled (in the preface to 
his Merope^ to represent the English as incapable of 
tragedy; nay, even of painting or of music. We are 
men, he says, who push to their extremes, upon our 
theatres, barbarity, absurdity and absolute indecency. 
— Men born in a too barren climate to produce a taste 
for the fine arts : and who must rank beneath all other 
people in the points of genius and of literature." 

But Hill, like the author he was attacking, was not 
satisfied with denouncing an individual. He ravaged 
the whole of French dramatic poetry, as Voltaire had 

153 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

the English. In this particular instance he observed 
that he had been compelled to retouch the characters 
in this high-boasted Merope in order to meet the re- 
quirements of that noble taste of dignified simplicity 
which characterized the London stage. It was a ne- 
cessity. French dramatic poetry he described as having 
been deprived of everything that animates the passions. 
It was given up to the pursuit of a cold, starved, tame 
abstinence. From an affectation to shun figure, as he 
phrased it, it had sunk to flatness. It had achieved 
an elaborate escape from energy into a grovelling, weari- 
some, bald, barren, unalarming chilliness of expression 
that emasculated the mind instead of moving it. Not 
content with thus wreaking himself upon adjectives 
in the capacity of critic, he further took up the rSle 
of prophet. He declared that not only had England 
had much finer writers in the past than France, but it 
had them now, and it would always have them. He 
added that he purposed to bring out a work comparing 
the stages of the two countries, which would convince 
French judges themselves of the inferiority of their 
own. Unfortunately Hill died in the early part of the 
following year. Consequently the design of removing 
the scales from the eyes of Voltaire's countrymen was 
never carried into execution. The loss to France has 
been irreparable. During the whole of the century it 
kept on with its blind preference for its own dramatists, 
and not to this day has the unhappy nation got over the 
error of its partiality. 

The passage just given from Hill reveals, however, 
one phase of the controversy which it could have been 

164 



RESENTMENT OF THE ENGLISH 

predicted beforehand that Voltaire's censures of Eng- 
land's greatest author would surely develop. A series 
of counter-attacks would inevitably be made upon French 
dramatic poetry and its leading representatives. In 
order to exalt Shakespeare it was not really necessary to 
decry Corneille. But national feeling had been kindled 
by Voltaire's assertions, and this peculiar sort of literary 
argumentation continued to rage during the rest of the 
eighteenth century. Henceforth the remarks about the 
two greatest of the French dramatists were not un- 
frequently as contemptuous and ignorant as had been 
Voltaire's references to Shakespeare. In this way of 
standing up for one's side imitation is easy; and the 
English soon bettered the instructions they had re- 
ceived. In May, 1747, for illustration, an essay on trag- 
edy was put forth by William Guthrie, little heard of 
now, but well known at the time as a miscellaneous 
writer and a historian. In it he took the ground that 
the extravagant reputation which the French dramatists 
then possessed was due to French art, and the extent 
to which they had spread the criticism of their drama, 
especially in enforcing the sacredness of the doctrine 
of the unities. Yet the truth was that they had never 
produced a poet with one spark of that real fire which 
animates a true dramatic genius. For it they had 
substituted correctness. They knew nothing of the 
English stage. They were ignorant that Jonson had 
written regular plays before they themselves had dreamed 
of their desirability. They decried Calderon and Lope 
de Vega. There was a cold admission on Guthrie's part 
that Corneille had accomplished something highly credit- 

155 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

able in the Cid ; but Racine was dismissed with the re- 
mark that he had written " several tragedies of which our 
middling rate of English poets need not be ashamed." 

It shows how far prejudice and resentment were tak- 
ing the place of knowledge and judgment that these 
words came from a man who was as much of a believer 
in the so-called classical drama as was Voltaire himself. 
It is noticeable, indeed, in the treatises put forth 
avowedly or covertly in reply to Voltaire's attacks, that 
no one ventured to repel the charge of irregularity 
brought against Shakespeare. In particular, no one of 
his defenders had the audacity to deny the obligation of 
observing the unities. Disbelief in the Trinity would 
have incurred at the time less reprobation. There was 
an uneasy feeling visible among the partisans of Shake- 
speare that by his disregard of these rules he had made 
the defence of his art diflficult. Voltaire's injfluence in 
strengthening the conviction that it was of first impor- 
tance to conform to the doctrine of the unities cannot 
easily be over-estimated. Its sacred character had been 
theoretically admitted long before in England ; but 
largely under the influence of his exhortations it had 
come to be more rigidly observed than ever in practice. 
To the feeling which was shocked by its violation he 
assuredly gave greatly increased intensity and force. 

Many illustrations of the fact can be furnished. The 
antiquary, Daines Barrington, for instance, while still 
a young man, wrote from Oxford in 1746 a letter for 
the periodical which goes usually under the name of 
' Dodsley's Museum.' It was an essay in imitation of 
Swift's ' Battle of the Books,' and purported to give an 

156 



RESENTMENT OF THE ENGLISH 

account of an engagement between the English and 
French writers. It was not printed then, but its author 
showed that he had never outgrown the callow ideas of 
his youth by including it among his ' Miscellanies ' pub- 
lished in 1781. In this piece Shakespeare is repre- 
sented as commanding the right wing of the English 
forces, and Corneille the corresponding wing of the 
French. A battle takes place between them — probably 
the first time in history the right wings of two opposing 
armies managed to confront each other. Voltaire is 
represented as having been sent out to ascertain the 
strength and disposition of the English troops. After 
making his reconnoissance, he advised Descartes, the 
commander-in-chief, to give direction to his engineers 
to charge the artillery which was to be pointed against 
Shakespeare with the unities of time and place. By 
this course they could not fail of producing great 
effect. In a battle in which two rio-ht wing's were 
opposed to each other, it was undoubtedly the proper 
business of the engineers to load the cannon. Accord- 
ingly they performed the duty which had been ordered. 
Shakespeare was represented as advancing to the attack 
at the sound of the trumpet ; but though he behaved 
with the greatest resolution, he did not meet with all 
the success he had promised himself. The artillery 
charged with the unity of time and of place, made a 
terrible havoc among his troops. Addison obtained 
leave to go to his assistance, and charged the English 
artillery with an essay against bombast declamation in 
tragedy. This had as terrible an effect upon Corneille 
as the other had had upon Shakespeare. Neither side 

157 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

was able to obtain a decided advantage, although the 
English, as was natural, are represented as having on 
the whole the superiority. 

There was in truth an apologetic tone almost invari- 
ably assumed by these early defenders of Shakespeare 
against Voltaire. They conceded that the laws laid 
down by Aristotle and Horace were agreeable to nature. 
They did not deny that Shakespeare had violated them. 
But after all they insisted that the beauties produced by 
the observance of the Aristotelian rules were of a sec- 
ondary class. They could easily be attained by men of 
inferior power. Precedence in dramatic poetry de- 
pended upon the exhibition of natural qualities, and 
upon the ability to excite the passions. This it was 
that required genius of the first order. It was here that 
Shakespeare surpassed all possible rivals. Much stress 
indeed was laid upon another unity — that of character 
— in which he excelled. This was devised to offset 
the very ancient and respectable ones which he con- 
fessedly disregarded. 

To this effect wrote Foote in 1747. Arthur Murphy 
took the same attitude in 1753. The future playwright, 
who had then abandoned banking for literature, had in 
the year last mentioned, set up a periodical of the essay 
order entitled ' The Gray's Inn Journal.' In its twelfth 
number he addressed a letter to Voltaire.^ It was based 
upon the discourse prefixed to the tragedy of Semiraniis. 
It was easy to expose the blunders the French author 
had made in his statements of fact. But Murphy did not 
content himself with the mere correction of details. He 

1 The number for Dec. 15, 1753. 
158 



RESENTMENT OF THE ENGLISH 

reproached Voltaire, as was now the fashion, with con- 
stantly complaining of the barbarism of Shakespeare 
while he as constantly availed himself of his labors. In 
Mahomet^ ' Macbeth,' he said, marshals you the way you 
are going. You advertise to bring in a ghost in Semira- 
mis, taken from the very play which you abuse. This 
charge of plagiarism became a sort of stock reply to 
Voltaire's fault-finding. Again and again he was told 
that he himself never mounted to so high a flight as 
when supported by the wings of the English dramatist. 
The further suggestion is found that he sought to hide 
his obligations. To vary slightly the words and entirely 
the meaning of a line of Pope's, it was plainly intimated 
that he was one who sought to do himself good by 
stealth, and blushed to find it fame. 



159 



CHAPTER VIII 

LA place's translation OF SHAKESPEARE 

The clamor of the English rolled for a long time 
over Voltaire's head without disturbing in the slightest 
his peace of mind. Of most of the criticism to which 
he was subjected from that quarter, he probably re- 
mained in ignorance. At any rate, whatever he heard, 
he did not heed. The years immediately following his 
departure from Berlin, in the early part of 1753, were 
spent by him principally in Switzerland. In his retreat 
on the shores of the Genevan lake he heard little said 
of Shakespeare, and he pretty certainly thought of him 
even less. During the sixth decade of the eighteenth 
century the name of the English dramatist hardly oc- 
curs in his correspondence. Furthermore, whatever 
references there are to him are of no importance. 
Voltaire's thoughts were in fact far removed from any 
controversies save those connected with his own writ- 
ings or his personal fortunes. Of these he usually had 
enough to occupy a good share of his time. He was 
engaged likewise in original composition. There was 
much too in the political situation to keep his attention 
fixed. During the closing years, in particular, of this 
sixth decade, the one outside interest to which his 

160 



LA PLACE'S TRANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

thoughts were directed, was the desperate struggle 
which his old friend, from whom he had parted in 
bitterness, was waging with the combined powers of 
the Continent. 

So he paid no heed to English attacks, even if he 
knew of them. He went on, whenever occasion pre- 
sented itself, repeating in the same calm, complacent 
way as of old, his previous misstatements about Shake- 
speare. Thus, in the preface to the Orphelin de la 
Chine, which came out in 1755, he referred once more 
to those plays of Shakespeare and Lope de Vega, which 
still pleased on the other side of the channel and beyond 
the Pyrenees. The action of these monstrous farces, 
he tells us, lasts sometimes twenty-five years. Though 
nothing but a heap of incredible stories, they are called 
tragedies. His pleasure was to contrast with these 
monstrosities the productions of his own land. In the 
same preface he tells us that the French have been 
able to produce about a dozen pieces which, if they are 
not absolutely perfect, are at least much above anything 
of this nature to which the rest of the world can pre- 
tend. A man who in all honesty thought the stage of 
his own country was superior to the Greek was not 
likely to take very seriously the productions of a theatre 
so alien as was the English, both in spirit and method, 
from the one which he sincerely deemed had made a 
narrow escape from being absolutely faultless. 

But while his thoughts were absorbed in other matters, 

a change of feeling was slowly going on in his own 

land. The attitude of his countrymen towards the 

dramatist to whom he had earlier directed their atten- 

11 161 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

tion was imperceptibly altering. In his Swiss retreat 
movements of literary currents were known to him only 
in a general way. He was not in the midst of them. 
All information he would gain about them would come 
from the views expressed in periodicals, or from the 
reports of correspondents or visitors. The last would 
be sure to be one-sided, and therefore imperfect. But 
from no quarter w^ould he get any real notion of those 
gradual changes of public opinion, of those unseen 
influences which modify or alter previously accepted 
beliefs. These, in truth, escape the notice of most of 
us until the results they have wrought present them- 
selves to our eyes as accomplished facts. Had he dwelt 
in the great capital, the nervous susceptibility he pos- 
sessed as a man of genius Avould have rendered him 
sensitive to their existence long before they were sus- 
pected by the multitude. When, therefore, the knowl- 
edge came, it was an unpleasant surprise to which 
Voltaire was treated. As the sixth decade of the 
century reached its close, he became aware that the 
interest in Shakespeare w'as assuming proportions of 
which he had formed no conception. The admiration 
for the English dramatist w^as taking a shape which 
was to become to him later one of the clearest evidences 
of the general decadence of taste which had overtaken 
the age. 

There is not the slightest doubt that Voltaire was 
perfectly sincere in the somewhat disparaging estimate 
which he took, on the whole, of Shakespeare. In fact, 
up to the period that we have reached, he can scarcely 
be said to have regarded him seriously. He had there- 

162 



LA PLACE'S TRANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

fore been perfectly willing at the outset to accord him 
the praise of having produced admirable scenes, while 
every one of his works was deficient as a whole. He 
had used him to attack practices on the French stage 
which he disliked, and to sustain innovations which he 
was anxious to introduce. Still in his eyes Shakespeare 
was a barbarian, was, in fact, little better than a clown, 
— the Gilles, as he later delighted to call him, of the 
booths at the fair. This contemptuous epithet, which 
towards the end of his life was to be constantly in his 
mouth, was used by him as early as 1735. When in 
that year he sent to correspondents the concluding 
scenes of his tragedy dealing with the death of Csesar, 
he usually shed a little light upon the density of their 
ignorance by informing them that these scenes had been 
translated from an English author named Shakespeare, 
who had flourished one hundred and fifty years before. 
" He is," he wrote to one of them, " the Corneille of 
London, great fool of everywhere else, and resembles 
Gilles more often than Corneille; but he has some 
admirable bits." ^ 

At that time he could say what he pleased. In the 
general ignorance which then prevailed in his country 
about Shakespeare, there was no one to correct or to 
contradict. But during the more than quarter of a 
century that had since elapsed, the words of the proph- 
ecy of Daniel had been fulfilled. Men had been running 
to and fro, and knowledge had increased — in partic- 
ular, knowledge of English literature. One agency 
there was, in bringing this about too important to be 

1 Letter to M. de Cideville, Nov. 3, 1735. 
163 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

passed over slightly. Shortly before the half-century 
drew to its close, a series of eight volumes had appeared 
containing partial versions of many of the most famous 
pieces of the English stage. Four of them had been 
given up to the plays of Shakespeare. This translation, 
however imperfect and unsatisfactory, furnished some 
definite idea of their character. For the first time men, 
who could not read English, were put in a position to 
get for themselves some conception of an author who 
had hitherto been known to them only by the reports 
of others. They could ascertain for themselves what 
was really that English taste in which it was pretended 
that La Mort de Cesar was written. This earliest trans- 
lation of parts of Shakespeare was the work of Pierre 
Antoine de la Place. 

It is no easy matter for a foreigner to get any satis- 
factory impression of La Place, without paying an 
attention to his works which the intrinsic importance of 
the man would probably not justify. His original 
writings do not rank high enough to be widely cir- 
culated. In consequence they are not ordinarily acces- 
sible. Hence about most of them we have usually to 
trust the reports of others. It has been the fortune and 
the misfortune of La Place that the few and scanty 
accounts of his career which have been transmitted to 
later times, have come from the mouths of unfriendly 
critics. They have come too from men who were full 
believers in the old order of things which was to pass 
away, and to whose eventual disappearance his ver- 
sion of Shakespeare was one of the agencies that 
contributed. There is no question that this work in- 

164 



LA PLACE'S TRANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

curred the secret hostility of Voltaire, and the open 
hostility of his partisans. From the writings of one of 
these, La Harpe, modern impressions of La Place have 
been largely derived. No sooner had the latter died 
than the former gave to the press a sketch of his life 
and character.^ It was written with some wit, a good 
deal of vivacity, and with a great deal more of ill-will — 
with a degree of it indeed that almost approached 
malignity. 

La Harpe's account of the man has accordingly all 
that attractiveness for most readers which generally 
belongs to pieces wiitten under the influence of malice, 
envy, and all uncharitableness. He denied La Place the 
possession of knowledge, of taste, of talents. It is the 
spirit and often the words of this sketch which have 
filtered down to modern times through the ordinary 
channels of reference. It has colored most notices of 
this writer in biographical dictionaries. Whether the 
estimate it gives be true or false, it obviously comes 
from a suspected quarter. La Harpe was a disciple of 
Voltaire, who adopted his master's failings and prejudices 
much oftener than he did his better characteristics. 
Wherever Voltaire was narrow, he was narrower. 
Wherever Voltaire talked confidently with little knowl- 
edge, La Harpe talked more confidently with no 
knowledge at all. He could not translate a single 
English sentence. That did not prevent him from pass- 
ing decisive judgments upon English authors, and 
expressing positive opinions about the comparative 

1 Reprinted in his Lijc€e, ou Cours de litt^rature, tome xiii, p. 31 1. 
165 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

merits of French and English pieces which treated of 
the same subject. 

It is not for a foreigner, who has read nothing of La 
Place save what he finds in his work on the English 
drama, to question the correctness of the depreciatory 
opinions expressed about his writings. But one thing 
can not be gainsaid. La Place had the suffrages of the 
multitude, if he lacked those of the critics. The favor 
he met with from the public was admitted on all sides. 
It was one of that sort of grievances which could never 
be forgiven. La Harpe, who denied him the possession 
of all other ability, conceded him the abihty to succeed 
far beyond his merits, though not up to his own estimate 
of his merits. This last characteristic, assuming it to 
be correctly reported, was a failing which he shared in 
common with La Harpe himself, even if we cannot also 
include the vast majority of the human race in the num- 
ber so feeling. The same testimony to his popularity is 
furnished by other contemporaries nearly as unfriendly. 
His play of Adele de Ponthieu was brought out in 1757, 
and was received with a good deal of favor. It was 
severely criticised by Grimm. Yet he admitted that in 
so doing he was giving his own personal views, and not 
the views of the public. He spoke furthermore of the 
previous works of La Place, which consisted largely of 
adaptations and translations. These, he tells us, had 
met with much success, without gaining much esteem.^ 
Remarks of such a sort, coupled with the facts given 
with them, make the reader, unable to test their correct- 
ness by independent investigation, doubtful of the 

1 Grimm's Correspondance htt&aire, tome ii, p. 130. 

166 



LA PLACE'S TRANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

estimate expressed about the man and his writings. It 
disposes him to believe, at least it inclines him to suspect, 
that while La Place's work may not be good, it is not so 
bad as it has been represented. 

La Place had been educated at the Jesuit college of 
St. Omer. There English only was spoken. He thus 
became familiar with that tongue, so much so that, accord- 
ing to his enemies, he never regained a full acquaintance 
with his own. The possession of this knowledge led 
him to undertake many translations. Among them was 
this project of giving to his countrymen in a series of 
volumes partial versions of the leading plays of the 
Enghsh stage. Naturally he began with the author in 
whom was the greatest interest, and about whom was 
the greatest curiosity. To Shakespeare he originally 
purposed to devote two volumes. These in his opinion 
would be sufficient to furnish all the information about 
him and his writings which his countrymen would care 
to have. He found himself mistaken. The two 
volumes — which appeared in 1746 — included ' Othello,' 
the third part of ' Henry VI.,' ' Richard HI.,' ' Hamlet ' 
and ' Macbeth.' The success which attended this in- 
stalment surpassed his expectations. In consequence 
he yielded, as he tells us, to the solicitations of men for 
whose opinions he had profound respect, and devoted 
two more volumes to the foremost English dramatist.^ 
In these were included ' Cymbeline,' ' Julius Ceesar,' 
' Antony and Cleopatra,' ' Timon ' in Shadwell's altera- 
tion, and ' The Merry Wives of Windsor.' The list of 
the plays contained in these four volumes furnishes ad- 

1 Le Theatre Anglois, tome iii. Pre/ace du Traducteur. 

167 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

ditional evidence of how little repute Shakespeare's 
comedies had then for stage purposes. Only one of 
these is given, and that one by no means his best. In 
so doing La Place had been faithful to the English 
sentiment of the time, so far as that was represented by 
its theatre. 

With the exception of ' Richard III.,' no whole play 
was translated. A version of one or more scenes would 
be followed by a summary of the contents of others in 
order that the reader should in no case miss the drift of 
the story. But besides the ten plays, which have been 
specified, an abstract of the plots of twenty-six others 
was given — thus accounting for all indeed which at 
that time were included in editions of Shakespeare. The 
translation was partly in prose, and partly in verse. It 
has frequently been made the subject of hostile and 
sometimes of contemptuous criticism. Grimm, for 
instance, magisterially but somewhat fatuously informs 
us that those who know Shakespeare only from La 
Place's version would not be absolutely in a position to 
judge him.^ Never was a safer statement made. It is 
a safe statement to make about all the French versions 
which have been produced since, or all that are ever 
likely to be produced. To such an observation it would 
have been a sufficient answer then, as it is now, that 
they would be in a better position to judge him than 
those who knew nothing of his works at all. It was the 
men of this last class who were the most voluble in the 
expression of opinion and the severest in their censures. 

The truth is that La Place was what Voltaire pre- 

1 Grimm's Correspond ance litt€raire, tome ii, p. 130. 
168 



LA PLACE'S TRANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

tended to be, an explorer. He brought back pretty full 
accounts, such as they were, of the unknown literature 
which he had gone to seek. That there would be error 
in his versions could be predicted beforehand. That 
there would be misunderstanding of meaning could be 
assumed, and far more frequently inadequacy of repre- 
sentation where the meaning was understood. That in 
particular he should fail to render things in accordance 
with the requirements of our present knowledge is 
something that was absolutely certain to happen. But 
this is a defect that pertains to every first attempt, and 
argues nothing against the man who has made it. The 
merit of Columbus is not obscured because he had 
opinions and published statements about the world he 
had discovered which would now be laughed to scorn 
by the dullest schoolboy. To the first adventurer in any 
new enterprise is rightly awarded the glory due him 
who has rendered possible the more perfect work of 
those who are to follow. To this justice La Place is 
entitled. Further, he made no greater blunders than 
Voltaire himself, nor did he deliberately set out, as 
Voltaire did later, to misrepresent his author, — to exe- 
cute a version of part of one of his plays which was 
little better than a travesty, and then dignify it by the 
title of the most faithful and exact of translations. 

To the first volume of his work La Place prefixed a 
very ample discourse upon the English stage. If one 
can judge of the author by this preface, his ideas were 
far in advance of the great majority of his contempo- 
raries. The discourse indeed makes one hesitate about 
yielding unquestioning assent to the depreciatory esti- 

169 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

mate of the man which Voltaire's partisans have handed 
down. Nothing that La Harpe ever wrote upon the 
drama, or for that matter La Harpe's master, can com- 
pare with it in breadth, in good sense, and in acute- 
ness. Like every one who fell under the attraction of 
Shakespeare's all-dominating personality, La Place was 
led to view with secret distrust the beliefs which he 
had been brought up to regard as sacred. The pro- 
fessed aim of his discourse was to give an account of the 
peculiar character of the English stage. It turned out 
to be largely a furtive treatise in its defence. It indi- 
rectly censured the French for their disposition to dis- 
regard and disparage the works of other peoples because 
they did not approach perfection, or at any rate the sort 
of perfection which the}^ themselves cherished. Their 
stage up to the time of Comeille had been ruder and 
more immature than the English. Now it was the only 
one in Europe where the rules were observed with the 
strictest exactitude. No censure of this condition of 
things was expressed ; it was very certainly suggested. 
La Place furthermore enlarged upon one view which 
Voltaire had previously indicated ; but he laid a stress 
upon it which the latter had failed to do. Can a whole 
people, he asked, continue to be made the dupe of a 
false impression that merit exists where there is really 
little or none ? Can a delusion of this sort continue for 
an indefinite period ? It is impossible. The merit may 
be exaggerated ; but it must be there. Shakespeare may 
be irregular ; he may be full of faults ; he may defy the 
rules of Aristotle ; but he fulfils the first condition of 
the dramatic art : he interests, he pleases, he excites. 

170 



LA PLACE'S TRANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

So long as La Place was speaking in his own person, 
he evidently did not deem it desirable to say everything 
he felt. He brought forward, in consequence, an emi- 
nent Englishman whose observations he purported to give. 
This gentleman, with that agreeable frankness of his 
countrymen which foreigners frequently find so engag- 
ing, indulged in some disagreeable strictures upon the 
French stage and the rules by which it was governed. 
These rules, he is represented as saying, are of course 
very proper rules ; they are no doubt worthy of all 
respect ; but instead of adding to my pleasure, they 
destroy it. It is useless to tell me that they are founded 
upon reason. I prefer a license which keeps me awake 
to a regularity which puts me to sleep. I go to the 
theatre to be amused, surprised, moved, softened, af- 
fected. No observance of rules can make up to me for 
being bored. Such are some of the views of the emi- 
nent Englishman, who is pretty certainly a creature of 
La Place's own invention. There is altogether too 
suspicious a likeness in them to the views which he him- 
self seems to entertain, but is careful not to express 
openly. 

It is clear that the long monologues to be found in 
the French plays found no favor in La Place's eyes. 
He felt their impropriety especially when they were 
plainly designed to give information to the audience, 
not to carry on the action of the piece. It is equally 
clear that he had a strong suspicion that dramatic art 
had not reached perfection in France. Still, all these 
views were expressed very guardedly. He had been 
careful not to lay himself open to any direct damaging 

171 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

attack. He had indulged in no unwarrantable admira- 
tion. He had done all in the way of censure that could 
properly be demanded of a Frenchman at this period. 
He set forth the authorized strictures upon Shakespeare. 
He censured the English stage for the low characters it 
introduced, for its bloody scenes, its revolting incidents, 
its terrible catastrophes. He specified particular pas- 
sages which were shocking to the just delicacy, the pure 
and refined taste for which his countrymen were distin- 
guished. In truth he did his duty nobly. He gave full 
expression to all the conventional judgments which it 
was the correct thing for an eighteenth-century critic to 
pronounce. 

Still he had not done enough. By the classicists it 
was felt that there was no heart in his censure. There 
was manifestly a latent sympathy with the views of that 
eminent Englishman who had expressed himself as bored 
by French plays. The praise was out of all proportion 
to the condemnation. Furthermore the praise was given 
to what was essential, the condemnation to what was 
accidental. The language in the English plays, he had 
observed, was always suited to the character of the 
speakers. It was noble when they were noble, low when 
they were low, commonplace when they were common- 
place. Consequently there was nothing less monotonous 
than their tragedy. This was really an indirect apology 
for the mixture of the serious and the comic in the same 
piece. La Place even translated the gravediggers' scene 
in * Hamlet,' not only because it was famous in England, 
but, as he says, on account of its exceeding singularity. 
Such passages in Shakespeare's plays as this fell of 

172 



LA PLACE'S TRANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

course under the regular official condemnation. But 
the force of the censure was impaired by the insinuation 
that the French taste was perhaps too delicate ; that it 
did not follow because the English taste was different, 
that it was on that account necessarily bad. " Let us 
guard," he said prophetically, " against condemning to- 
day what our grandchildren will perhaps applaud." 

Again, La Place was not thoroughly sound upon the 
doctrine of the unities. He had the same idea of the 
fiction of representing things as happening at one place 
and in one day which could hardly happen in a dozen 
places or a dozen days which Lessing was afterwai'ds to 
expose so pitilessly as the fmudulent device to avoid the 
operation of rules which it was pretended to observe with 
special strictness. Of this monstrous abuse of the doc- 
trine of the unities, no one, it has been pointed out, had 
been more guilty than Voltaire, who posed as its special 
champion. La Place did not say this ; he exhibited no 
disrespect to the greatest man of letters of the age. 
But he could hardly help displaying a secret sympathy 
with the change of scene and the prolongation of time. 
There was no open profession of faith in this heresy. 
On the contrary, it met with a mild kind of reprobation. 
The arguments against the unities, he confessed, were 
undoubtedly plausible ; still they were not sufficient to 
overthrow them. I^ut he scuttled away from the ex- 
posure he ought to have made of the falsity of these 
plausible arguments, with the petty excuse that he would 
not undertake to repeat the solid replies to them which 
all the world knew so well. In shirking the duty of 
denunciation in this and in other matters. La Place had 

173 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

shown the cloven foot. Its existence was at once de- 
tected by the keen-sighted guardians of regularity. In 
the preface to his third volume, which came out later 
in the same year as the first two, he felt compelled to 
defend himself against criticism which implied that he 
had compared the French stage with the English to the 
disadvantage of the former. 

The discourse upon the English theatre was naturally 
offensive to the partisans of the rules ; the work itself 
was much more offensive by the fuller information it 
furnished. Voltaire, who seemed to think that his 
countrymen should be contented with what he had 
doled out to them, could not have been pleased with 
the translation. He was not pleased with it ; but as 
there was nothing in it to justify special attack, he did 
not at the outset give public expression to the senti- 
ments he privately felt. He was still less pleased with 
it as time went on. The work did not profess to be 
complete. It was made up of selections, especially of 
those scenes which the translator regarded as the finest 
and most striking. Naturally almost everything partic- 
ularly repellent to the then reigning taste in France, 
was omitted or modified. This necessitated the throw- 
ing out of any coarse passage or low scene in the 
original. The worst of these could be excluded all 
the more easily because they rarely helped forward the 
action of the piece. But it soon became Voltaire's 
idea that the only proper way to display Shakespeare, 
as he really is, was to pick out the passages which 
would be offensive on the score of delicacy, and to lay 
a stress upon them which they never had in the place 

174 



LA PLACE'S TRANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

where they are found. The object of La Place had 
been to reveal Shakespeare, so far as in him lay, in his 
greatness and majesty ; to render clear to his countrymen 
what it was that had made him for a century and a half 
the favorite dramatist of his own nation. He was intent 
on explaining him, not on befouling him. But in the 
omission of any passages that would offend the suscep- 
tibilities of the French, Voltaire felt that La Place had 
not done his duty. He should have selected such 
passages by preference. They were the ones, as we 
shall see, upon which later he was himself to dwell 
particularly ; the ones to which he called the attention 
of his readers; the ones wliich he culled out in order 
to render them into the language of his countrymen, and 
in so doing took pride in proclaiming himself a faithful 
translator. 

There was another reason that led Voltaire to enter- 
tain a dislike for this version. However imperfect and 
unsatisfactory it was, it gave the public an infinite deal 
more of information about the matter and manner of 
the great English dramatist than had been supplied 
by himself. We must not allow ourselves to forget 
that up to this time Voltaire had contributed scarcely 
anything to the real knowledge of the author whom he 
claimed to have made known to his countrymen. His 
version of the speech of Brutus, his so-called translation 
of the soliloquy of Hamlet, his adaptation of the speech 
of Antony over the dead body of Caesar, sum up every- 
thing which he had himself directly furnished. His in- 
direct influence in stimulating interest in Shakespeare's 
writings is quite another thing ; but while this excited 

175 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

curiosity, it did not impart information. The latter was 
a work which La Place's version performed in a measure. 
One result bf it was inevitable. The justice of much 
of Voltaire's criticism came in question. His obliga- 
tions to the English dramatist — nearly all of which 
he had forgot to mention — became apparent. It was 
certain that there would be men who would begin to 
entertain a different opinion of Shakespeare from that 
officially authorized as the only proper one by the 
literary dictator of Europe. It took years to bring 
about any such result on a large scale ; and even then 
it was but partial. It was little more than a critical 
revolt against the doctrine and practice of the French 
stage that manifested itself ; the revolution was to wait 
nearly a century. 

But there was enough of it at the time to excite the 
indignation of the vainest and most sensitive literary 
man of Europe. The feeling can be traced earlier ; but 
from the end of the sixth decade it becomes very con- 
spicuous. By this time Voltaire had become aware 
of the disaffection. Thenceforward his attitude towards 
Shakespeare distinctly changed. Though there was 
never any essential difference in the view he took of 
the English dramatist, there was a vast difference in 
the way that view was expressed. He continued to 
speak, with assumed impartiality, both of his merits and 
his defects ; but as years went by, his merits were 
steadily minimized, and his defects maximized. Finally 
the former were thrown almost entirely out of considera- 
tion, or were at best perfunctorily acknowledged. For 
the rest of his life, indeed, the war he waged upon 

176 



LA PLACE'S TRANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespeare became one of the most important of his 
many ^ minor controversies in the perpetual round of 
hostilities of all sorts in which he was engaged. It 
is hardly saying too mucli that it indirectly contributed 
to hasten his death, thougli tluit, however, could not have 
been delayed many years ; for it was one of the agencies 
that led liim to undertake that last journey to Paris, in 
which he was to gain the glory of a momentary triumph 
and to die. 

One must avoid getting an erroneous impression from 
what is here said. The life of Voltaire was one of per- 
petual warfare. The attacks on Shakespeare, the con- 
tentions he carried on with the admirers of that author, 
were little more than mere incidents in his stormy 
career. Compared with the controversies in which he 
was engaged in behalf of toleration and of freedom of 
speech, those concerned with the English dramatist are 
insigniticant. Nor into them did he throw himself, ex- 
cept on rare occasions, with anything like the ceaseless 
and fiery energy with which he went forth to fight with 
those who persecuted opinion under the guise of pro- 
moting reliofion. It was here he did his most congenial 
and naturally his most effective work. It was here he 
achieved his greatest successes ; it was here also that, 
like the war-horse in Scripture, he invariably scented 
the battle afar off. In such contests there was little 
limit to his zeal or toil. To the bigots and persecutors 
of his time he must have seemed an incarnation of the 
Puritan conception of the devil, as a being not equal, of 
course, to the Almighty, but making up largely for his 
inferiority in power by his infernal activity. Still, in- 
12 177 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

considerable, relatively speaking, as were the hostilities 
directed against Shakespeare and Shakespeare's admirers, 
they actually took up no small share of his attention ; 
and as time went on, a proportionately greater share. 
As such they demand a full examination. 

It is right to add here, that unjustifiable as were many 
of Voltaire's proceedings, inaccurate as were many of 
his statements, and even discreditable as were some of 
his devices, there was at bottom a rugged intellectual 
honesty in the old warrior, which at times compelled 
him, almost in spite of himself, to admit the merit 
which he hated to see others applaud warmly. True, 
the acknowledgment was too frequently made for the 
sake of depreciating some one else ; but for all that, 
there was in it the ring of genuine sincerity. The 
power of the great Elizabethan attracted him as much 
as his practices shocked him. The varying feelings of 
admiration and dislike, with which he regarded him, we 
shall see exemplified in the years that follow. Accord- 
ing as the one or the other sentiment prevailed at the 
moment, corresponded the character of his utterance. 
Still, it must be said, in general, that as he advanced in 
years his enmity steadily increased, and his disparage- 
ment became more frequent and pronounced. His change 
of attitude was not due at all to any change in his opin- 
ions. It was simply the result of the change of attitude 
which had come over his own countrymen. 

During the course of his life Voltaire passed, in fact, 
from that state of mind about Shakespeare in which he 
had felt something of the rapture of a discoverer, to 
another state, which, starting out with feelings made up 

178 



LA PLACE'S TRANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

of admiration, disgust, and jealousy, developed into 
positive dislike and ended in what may fairly be called 
genuine hatred. He watched the progress of his reputa- 
tion with anxious eyes. This poet, lawless and irregular, 
of whom the world outside of England would, in his 
opinion, never have heard had it not been for himself, 
was now threatening to drive his benefactor from the 
hearts of his own countrymen. The vastness of his 
genius was coming to be insisted upon. The faults 
that were found in him did not strike men as serious, if 
it was even proper to speak of them as faults at all. 
There was at times a disposition manifested to regard 
them as virtues. There were occasionally ominous in- 
dications that men were going to the inconceivable 
length of preferring him to Corneille. By certain rash 
and reckless panegyrists indeed this very assertion had 
been made. Voltaire's feelings were outraged. As he 
looked at it, he had a right to be angry ; it was a duty 
on his part to protest. He it was who had introduced 
Shakespeare to the knowledge of France. It seemed to 
him something almost like ingratitude that his country- 
men should not be content with the estimate of the 
English dramatist which he had taken the pains to set 
forth as the one strictl}' correct. Voltaire w^as a man of 
genius. As such, he possessed that insight which is so 
much better than knowledge. It was nevertheless hard 
for him to appreciate that even with a people wedded, 
as were the French, to classical models, a genius so 
much mightier than his own could long remain under 
his patronage. 

To avert the degradation which threatened, as he 

179 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

honestly believed, the honor of France became now an 
object which he kept steadily in view. His country- 
men were still true to Corneille and Racine. To us it 
seems peculiarly absurd to fancy that the time would 
ever come when they would cease to be true. Individ- 
uals might dissent from the general partiality ; but not 
the nation at large. But such a result did not seem 
impossible to Voltaire. There was a small but noisy 
minority which was disposed to look with disrespect 
upon the traditions of the French stage. Its members 
celebrated the grand manner of Shakespeare. They 
spoke of him as the faithful interpreter of nature, they 
contrasted his fire, his simple but strong expression, with 
the dry and meagre tragedies, without action and with- 
out emotion, so many of which in their opinion then 
afflicted the French stage.^ Would this minority ever 
become a majority ? Voltaire unquestionably feared so 
at times. There was in his thoughts an uneasy fore- 
boding, similar to that which haunted the hearts of the 
Romans of the Empire at the possible ruin to Latin 
civilization and rule which lay hid in the depths of the 
German forests. That gigantic figure across the channel 
loomed up larger and more terrible every time he turned 
his eyes in that direction. Was this monster destined 
to cross the narrow seas and effect the conquest of the 
Continent? Was this carefully constructed dramatic 
art, in which France excelled all nations, even the 
Greeks ; was this regularity, this decorum, this purity, 
this elegance to be swept away by the rude brute strength 

^ These are almost the very words used later by Mercier in his Tableau 
de Paris. 

180 



LA PLACE'S TRANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

of a savage barbarian who had no knowledge of the 
beautiful and noble past, and lacked utterly a particle 
of taste which might in a measure make amends for his 
ignorance? Though he usually pretended to regard 
such a result as impossible of occurrence, it was the 
secret dread of it which henceforth influenced tlie ex- 
pression of his feelings and changed his manner of 
speecli. From the outset Shakespeare had been in his 
eyes an inspired barbarian. As time moved on, he 
came to forget the adjective and remembered only the 
noun. 



181 



CHAPTER IX 

THE APPEAL TO THE NATIONS 

Of the numerous periodicals which circulated on the 
Continent during the eighteenth century, one of the 
most important was the Journal Encyclopcdique. It was 
a fortnightly. It was first established at Liege in 1756 
by Pierre Rousseau, a personage altogether different, it 
is needless to say, from the poet, or from the far more 
celebrated novelist. Its founder sympathized with the 
political and religious views of the philosophers, as they 
called themselves and were called. The periodical 
came in consequence to be considered one of their 
organs. Voltaire is said to have written for it fre- 
quently ; he certainly spoke of it in high terms. Driven 
out of Liege because of the objectionable opinions it 
expressed, the journal found at last an abiding-place in 
Bouillon. There it remained during the rest of its 
existence, which lasted until near the end of the century. 

In the autumn of 1760 there appeared in successive 
numbers of this periodical two articles which excited to 
a high degree the wratli of Voltaire.^ The first con- 
tained a parallel between Shakespeare and Corneille, 
the second a similar parallel between Otway and Racine. 
Both of them purported to be translations from the 

* Oct. 15 and Nov. 1, 1760 ; tome vii, Deuxieme Partie. 
182 



THE APPEAL TO THE NATIONS 

English. But no information was vouchsafed as to the 
place where the originals appeared or the time when. 
Nor was there any attempt put forth to identify the 
English author or even suggest his name. For all this 
reticence there was ample reason. The fiction of trans- 
lation, which was maintained in both articles, is suscep- 
tible of an easy explanation. The tyranny of dramatic 
taste and opinion was then as potential in France, as 
intolerant and unsparing, as was the tyranny of religious 
dogma. Against the latter Voltaire was perpetually 
protesting ; in behalf of the former he frequently mani- 
fested the disposition to act the part of persecutor. 
Few in consequence could then be found to express 
openly views which were beginning to be entertained 
privately. In particular, no French periodical would 
have been willing to make itself directly responsible 
for the unpatriotic and scandalous sentiments that were 
conveyed in these two articles. 

Unpatriotic as coming from an Englishman they could 
not be deemed ; but scandalous in Voltaire's e3^es they 
certainly were. The second article does not particu- 
larly concern us here. Our interest is limited to the 
first, which has a certain significance as indicating the 
views that in some quarters Frenchmen were beginning 
to entertain of the comparative merits of Shakespeare 
and Corneille. In this article they were both spoken 
of as the fathers of dramatic poetry in their respective 
countries. They were both described as excelling in 
tragedy and even in comedy. It was the sublime 
which chiefly characterized Corneille. On the other 
hand, Shakespeare had distinguished himself in so many 

183 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

different ways that it was difficult to say in which he 
most excelled. If one were compelled to make a deci- 
sion, he would perhaps select the species which Longinus 
calls the terribly beautiful as that in which the drama- 
tist surpassed himself. The ghost scene in ' Hamlet ,' 
the writer went on to declare, is incontestably the 
masterpiece of the stage in this line. It presents a 
great variety of objects, all diversified in a thousand 
different fashions, all proper to fill the spectator with 
terror and awe. There is not a single one of these 
variations which does not form a picture worthy of the 
pencil of Raphael. 

The remarks about the French author had been com- 
plimentary ; still, the comparison with the English one 
could hardly be called flattering. Worse yet was to 
follow. The eloquence of Corneille was declared to be 
alwaj^s equal, majestic, and sublime. As in that con- 
sisted the eloquence of the Romans, it was no surprising 
matter therefore that his subjects should be taken from 
Roman history. Scenes in Civna were given as master- 
pieces in this style. But the dead fly which the writer 
now proceeded to cast into this laudatory ointment 
made it peculiarly offensive to the patriotic heart. 
"Though Corneille," he added, "is full of elevation and 
a masculine eloquence, and though he abounds in sen- 
tentious speeches and profound maxims, in which he 
equals Tacitus himself, one will A'^ainly search in his 
^vritings for that inexhaustible fund of an imagination 
equally pathetic and sublime, fantastic and picturesque, 
sombre and gay, and that prodigious variety of charac- 
ters, all so well marked, all so well contrasted, that there 

184 



THE APPEAL TO THE NATIONS 

is not a single one of their speeches which can be trans- 
ferred from the one to the other : talents which are 
peculiar to Shakespeare, and in which he surpasses all 
other poets. He is, so to speak, the mirror of nature, 
in which all the traits of the human soul are reflected 
as perfectly as the features of the countenance are dis- 
played in the glass of ordinary mirrors." 

As if this were not enough, the writer went on to 
make a comparison between the ways the two authors 
had treated their subjects. He found in all the plots of 
Corneille a sensible uniformity in the principal charac- 
ters ; in those of Shakespeare an infinite variety. Even 
when the latter makes ambition the leading motive, as 
in Macbeth and Richard HI., one cannot sufficiently 
admire, we are told, the skill which renders conspicuous 
the distinguishing differences between the two. Hence 
the conclusion was drawn that in general Corneille was 
inferior to Shakespeare. He consoled the former's 
countrymen, however, by crediting their dramatist with 
superiority in certain particulars. The French author 
surpassed the English in the talent of introducing skil- 
ivlly the various incidents of his plays and in the art of 
rendering them regular. But even this acknowledg- 
ment of his superiority was more than counterbalanced 
by the implied depreciation which followed of this very 
regularity in which he was admitted to excel. " In a 
Avord," he continued, " one can say that Shakespeare has 
too much genius to subject himself to the rules of the 
stage, and that Corneille, had he been a great genius, 
would have been less subservient to them." Then 
follows the dreadful conclusion of the whole matter. 

185 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

"Shakespeare," summed up the writer, "was incon- 
testably a great poetic genius, and Corneille an excel- 
lent dramatic poet." 

Well might such a parallel pretend to be a transla- 
tion. As an original contribution it would have out- 
raged all the reputable public sentiment of France. 
Well might the writer take refuge in the assertion that 
it was the reproduction of the views of the men of an- 
other race. The author of the article manifestly felt 
that he was carrying audacity to an extreme in even 
presenting in his own tongue matter so repellent to 
good sense and good taste. He therefore appended a 
note for the purpose of expressing his dissent from 
these sweeping statements. Still, his dissent was of the 
mildest character. " These distinctions," he wrote, " are 
very forced. There could be much to say about all this. 
But let us permit the English to do honor to their great 
men," This method of publishing his own opinions 
under the guise of revealing to his countrjanen the opin- 
ions of a foreign people was a device — not to call it a 
trick — which had been learned from Voltaire himself. 
It was one of the early fruits of that author's teachings, 
often destined ultimately to destroy in many instances 
the dogmas of their creator. The note further enabled 
the writer to keep up the fiction of the pretended for- 
eign origin of the views set forth. Tliis imputation of 
an alien source from which these reprehensible senti- 
ments were derived, was made still more pronounced 
in the article on Racine and Otway which followed 
in the next number of the periodical. There the dec- 
laration was expressly made that it was not only 

18fi 



THE APPEAL TO THE NATIONS 

translated from the English, but that it was translated 
literally. 

At the time these articles appeared England and 
France were in the midst of the Seven Years' War. The 
contest extended over the two hemispheres. England, 
under the able and energetic administration of Pitt, was 
triumphant alike in the East and the West. Voltaire 
was in many respects a genuine cosmopolitan. But his 
cosmopolitanism had been rudely shaken by the succes- 
sive blows which had been dealt to the prestige of his 
native land. For the loss of Canada he cared little ; for 
tlie retention of India, where he had the interest of per- 
sonal investment, he cared a great deal. The war too 
displeased him. He justly felt that it had been under- 
taken with as little reason as it had been carried on 
with little success. To the disasters of France by land 
and sea was now added this assault, as he deemed it, 
upon the supremacy of the French drama. He seems to 
have been more disturbed by it than by the material 
losses his country had sustained. Bad too as was this 
first article, he was further irritated by the second — the 
authorship of which has been ascribed to the Abb^ 
Provost — on Otway and Racine. This last-named 
writer was the god of his dramatic idolatry. But here 
he was not only put, as a mere matter of course, below 
Corneille, but Otway was reckoned his equal, and was 
proclaimed in some respects his superior. 

It is a natural inference from his comments that 
Voltaire accepted without reserve the legend of the 
foreign origin of these articles. His outraged feelings 
found expression at once in his correspondence. "I 

187 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

am angry with the English," he said in one of his 
letters. " Not only have they taken Pondicherry — at 
least I believe so — but they publish that their Shakes- 
peare is infinitely above Gilles." Thus he wrote to the 
Marquise du Deffand, known more particularly to students 
of our eighteenth-century literature as the friend and 
correspondent of Horace Walpole. In order to give her 
a full comprehension of the ridiculousness of the pre- 
tensions put forth in behalf of Shakespeare, he fur- 
nished her with a slight sketch of ' Richard III.' His 
account of that tragedy is not so far out of the way, for 
Voltaire, as might have been anticipated. There are 
probably in it not more than half a score of instances of 
errors of fact or of inference. It would be a waste of 
time and space, out of all proportion to their intrinsic 
importance, to trace the variations from exact truth, or 
misunderstandings of it, or perversions of it, which are 
scattered up and down the brief account of the play 
contained in this letter. Two of them, however, are per- 
haps worth some notice. Shakespeare had represented 
as a special mourner attending the interment of the 
corpse of Henry VI. the widow of that king's slaughtered 
son. She was the daughter of the Earl of Warwick, 
and subsequently became the wife of Richard. Voltaire 
took her to be, not the widow of the son of Henry VI., 
but the widow of Henry VI., himself. It required 
almost a genius for inaccuracy to make this particular 
mistake, with the text of the original before his eyes. 
Still, he accomplished it. In his account Richard is 
therefore represented as wooing not a young woman, 
but the fierce Margaret of Anjou, who was actually 

188 



THE APPEAL TO THE NATIONS 

more than a score of years older than himself. To her 
face he celebrates her personal charms. He tells her 
that it was the hope of making her and her beauty his 
own which had led him to commit the crimes he did. 
There is something amusing in the young Richard 
addressing these remarks, as he does in Voltaire's 
account, to a woman of over fifty years of age. Had he 
found in Shakespeare a blunder so gross, there would 
have been hardly any limit to the delight with which 
he would have gloated over it, or to the frequency with 
which he would have called to it the attention of his 
correspondents and readers. 

Perhaps no such gentle term as blundering can be 
applied to another passage in this account of the tragedy. 
In the altercation which is represented as having gone 
on between Richard and the mourning daughter-in-law 
of the king, the latter is described by Shakespeare as 
spitting at him in her wrath. To Richard's question 
Avhy she does this — it is only from this question of his 
that the text of the play lets us into the knowledge of 
the fact — she answers that she wishes it were mortal 
poison for his sake. To that he replies that never came 
poison from so sweet a place. The conversation is as- 
suredly violent enough not to stand in need of exag- 
geration. But in no such feeble way does it appear in 
Voltaire's report. Here is the incident with its atten- 
dant circumstances, as found in his account: The so- 
called queen not merely spits at her questioner, she 
" spits in his face. Richard thanks her and asserts that 
nothing is so sweet as her spittle." The face, the thanks, 
and the particular comment made by Richard are all 

189 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

Voltaire's contribution to the scene ; Shakespeare had 
neglected to introduce any of them. It was pabulum 
of this sort which the French critic dealt out to his con- 
fiding countrymen as specimens of the work of the 
English author. Naturally he was grieved at what he 
depicted. " Is it not true," he asked, " that if our 
water-carriers made dramatic pieces, they would make 
them more refined ? " It is certainly to be hoped that 
they would report more honestly those they had read. 
" Is it not sad," he concluded, " that the same country 
which has produced Newton has produced these mon- 
sters, and that it admires them ? " ^ 

He said to his correspondent that he told her all this 
because he was full of it. He was fuller of it, as we 
see, than he was of knowledge of it. His letters 
during this period show that these two articles in 
the Journal Encyclopedique troubled him deeply. He 
could offer no reasonable objection to their appearance 
in a French periodical. To exhibit to his countrymen 
the opinions and tastes of other peoples was something 
for which he had been wont to contend clamorously. 
But in spite of his probably genuine belief in the 
foreign authorship of these pieces, he was vaguely con- 
scious that they represented the views of a certain body 
of his countrymen. These would be cheered by reading 
sentiments of this sort in an influential periodical 
printed in their own tongue. Voltaire, too, felt at heart 
that he himself was personally concerned. In defend- 
ing the repute of the great writers of his land, he had 
constantly in mind his own repute. If they were 

1 Letter to the Marquise du Deffaud of Dec. 9, 1760. 
190 



THE APPEAL TO THE NATIONS 

wrong, if their art was inferior, he too was wrong and 
his art was inferior, possibly more inferior. If, there- 
fore, he could not becomingly object to the diffusion in 
France of this poison, he could at least furnish a 
speedy antidote. Before these articles could do their 
deadly work he hastened to prepare a specific which 
should counteract their evil effects. He at once set 
about composing a treatise on the English drama 
and its inferiority to the French. " Zeal for my 
country has seized me," he wrote to D'Argental. "I 
have been made indignant by an English brochure, in 
which Shakespeare is preferred exceedingly to Cor- 
neille." ^ The overweening arrogance of the islanders 
ought in his opinion to be rebuked. " Aid me," he 
wrote nearly a month later, " to avenge my country for 
this Anglican insolence." ^ 

As a result of his labors early in 1761 appeared at 
Paris his dissertation against the barbarous English,^ as 
in his correspondence he at one time described it ; or 
at another, as the apology of his masters against the 
English.* The treatise came out anonymously. It was 
the method of publication he preferred for many rea- 
sons, but particularly because it enabled him to speak of 
himself and do full justice to his own merits. The 
publisher naturally took care that the secret of the 
authorship should not be kept. Voltaire, who declared 
that the work as originally printed was as full of errors 



1 Letter of Dec. 16, 1760. 

2 Letter of Jau. 9, 1761. 

« Letter to the Comte d'Argental, Feb. 16, 1761. 
* Letter of April 11, 1761, to D'Argental. 
191 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

as it was of lines,^ was indignant at the revelation. At 
least be pretended to be ; still no one is ever able to 
ascertain his real feelings about a transaction of this 
sort from what he says himself. He wrote to his friend 
D'Argental with an assumption of great indignation 
that this justification of Corneille, this plea against 
Shakespeare, this preference given to French refinement 
over English barbarism had been announced as the work 
" of your creature of the Alps. " ^ This first edition bore 
the title of Appel a toutes les nations de V Europe.^ Three 
years later it was published with some changes and 
additions as a treatise on the English drama. Its 
ostensible author was then Jerome Carr^, one of the 
numerous aliases under which Voltaire wrote. It is 
upon the form of it which appeared in 1764, that all 
comment is based which is made here upon the work. 

The opening paragraph of this treatise revealed the 
reason of its production. The longer he thought of the 
matter, the more important had it become in Voltaire's 
mind. The articles in the Journal Encyclopedique had 
been dignified as we have seen, by the name of a brochure. 
They now developed into two volumes, though it was 
admitted that they were little ones. From any record 
of the time and place of the publication of these, biblio- 
graphical research would have retired baffled ; but Vol- 
taire contented himself with assuming it as a fact. 

1 Letter to Damilaville, April '22, 1761. 

2 Letter of March 19, 1761 to D'Argental; also of March 29 to the 
same. 

3 The full title is Appel a toutes les nations de V Europe des jugements d'un 
€crivain Anglais ou manifeste au sujet des honneurs du pavilion entre les 
theatres de Londres et de Paris. Bengesco, Bibliographie, etc., tome ii, p. 96. 

192 



THE APPEAL TO THE NATIONS 

" Two little English books," he said, " teach us that 
this nation celebrated by so many good works and great 
enterprises, possesses in addition two excellent tragic 
poets. One is Shakespeare, who, we are assured, leaves 
Corneille far behind him ; the other the tender Otway, 
much superior to the tender Racine." Here again the 
English source of these articles appears accepted in all 
sincerity. In this treatise he took the two sets of com- 
parisons under consideration ; it is the first alone to 
which we need pay attention. 

It was, Voltaire said, and said justly, a matter of taste. 
Accordingly it did not seem possible that any reply 
could be made to the English contention. The dispute 
was certainly one which could not be settled by those 
immediately concerned. One could hardly expect to 
convince a whole people that the very taste they showed 
was positive proof that they showed bad taste. What 
resource, therefore, remained for those who sought to 
ascertain the truth ? There was but one way, Voltaire 
told us, to set the question at rest. This was by calling 
for the verdict of other nations. Let them decide be- 
tween the stage of London and of Paris. Let the 
readers from St. Petersburg to Naples pass judgment 
upon their comparative merits. It was with this idea 
in his mind that he had composed his treatise. It was 
this which had suggested the original title. It was to 
be an appeal to all the nations of Europe. 

The proposition had on its face a look of fairness. 

There was a wide difference between the taste of the 

French and the English in dramatic art. Since it was 

asking too much of either to submit to the judgment 

13 193 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

of the other, what more equitable course presented itself 
than to refer the point in dispute to the arbitration of 
foreigners ? From the very nature of things they can 
be assumed to be disinterested. They have no national 
prepossessions. Accordingly it can fairly be expected 
that their decision will be impartial. Plausible as this 
method may seem, it can impose only upon those who 
do not take the trouble to think. This would be true 
of such an appeal in any case. Few men there are who 
are capable of judging the merit of poetry in a foreign 
tongue. The number of those capable of judging the 
comparative merits of poetry in two foreign tongues is 
far fewer. Even if they have the requisite taste, they 
rarely have the requisite familiarity with both languages 
which enables them to exercise their taste to the best 
advantage. The value of the foreign verdict is conse- 
quently always vitiated by the very limited number of 
those to whom the appeal can be properly made. There 
is, besides, the inherent defect belonging to the body 
which is to render the decision. Some of the judges 
will have knowledge, but little taste. Others will have 
taste, but little knowledge. 

But the method proposed, untrustworthy at any time, 
would at this time have been ridiculously untrustworthy 
in the case of Shakespeare and Corneille. French was 
then read and spoken all over the Continent. English 
was a comparatively unknown tongue. Voltaire could 
not, or would not see the worthlessness of any verdict 
pronounced by the tribunal he had selected. He how- 
ever unconsciously revealed the hopelessness of expecting 
from it under any circumstances an impartial decision. 

194 



THE APPEAL TO THE NATIONS 

Foreign nations, he implied, had already spoken. No 
man of letters, be he Russian or Italian, German or 
Spanish, Dutch or Swiss, but knew the Cinna of Cor- 
neille. Few there were who had read or could read 
Shakespeare. This he tells us himself. Yet the pre- 
tensions of two authors were to be submitted to a body 
of men who were thoroughly familiar with the works of 
one of them. Of those of the other they knew little 
and naturally cared less. They were not acquainted 
with the speech in which these were written. Further- 
more, they would certainly never take the requisite 
pains to learn it, which would be a necessary preliminary 
to enable them to decide upon the merits of what was 
referred to their judgment. 

It is accordingly obvious that there was but one way 
in which the Continent could be put into a position to 
judge of Shakespeare — that is, by attaining a familiarity 
with the language in which he wrote so intimate that 
his works could be read with ease. A complete transla- 
tion could give a certain degree of knowledge of the 
poet's intellectual characteristics. It could give a better 
one of his dramatic methods, a still better one of the 
mere matter of his plays. But a translation, however 
excellent, could furnish only the faintest possible con- 
ception of his manner, of his force and fire, above all of 
his poetry as poetry. This would be true, in particular, 
of a version made into a tongue so remote as is the 
French from the English both in diction and spirit. 
Such a view as this of tlie situation was something that 
might fairly be called self-evident ; but it seems never 
to have occurred to Voltaire. To provide for the lack- 

195 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

ing knowledge of the English author, not even was a 
complete translation essential in his eyes. An outline 
of the plot, with the rendering into prose of a few pas- 
sages, struck him as all that was really needed. Yet 
even under these circumstances a further question would 
naturally present itself to the man looking for an im- 
partial decision. Who was the one that could be de- 
pended upon to supply fairly the meagre information 
required? It excites a mingled feehng of amusement 
and astonishment to find Voltaire entertaining no doubt 
that he was the proper person to communicate this knowl- 
edge. His undertaking it gave at once to the whole 
proceeding the character of farce. It was very much 
the same as intrusting to the devil's advocate the duty 
of urging the reasons for the canonization of a saint. 

The proposition itself had been delightfully preposter- 
ous ; the performance was to be even more so. Voltaire 
set about it as gravely as if he were a judge, and not an 
advocate. Tliere Avas, as he had indicated, a presump- 
tion in favor of the French dramatist, in consequence of 
the familiarity of foreigners with his works, and of their 
ignorance of Shakespeare. Still it was only a presump- 
tion. It was now his purpose to give to the educated 
men of all nations the abiUty to decide for themselves 
the question of superiority between the two dramatists. 
Of Corneille it was not necessary to say anything, for 
with him they were already acquainted. He on his part 
would undertake to supply them with the knowledge of 
Shakespeare requisite for reaching a decision. Voltaire 
appears to have been impressed with the generosity 
which had induced him to set about this task. It was 

196 



THE APPEAL TO THE NATIONS 

a singular culmination to the successive steps he had 
taken to settle impartially the matter in dispute. He 
had selected his own tribunal. He had selected one 
which at that time, according to his own account, would 
be naturally biassed in favor of his own side. He was 
now to set forth to the judges he had chosen the merits of 
the side to wliich he was opposed. This he did by giving 
a somewhat detailed account of the tragedy of ' Hamlet.' 
It is fair to say at the outset that the outline he fur- 
nished of the plot of this play is far more accurate than 
that he ever gave of the whole plot or single scene of 
any other of the pieces of Shakespeare upon which from 
time to time he dilated. This does not imply that it 
is accurate in 'itself. It is a charitable supposition that 
several of his statements are based upon imperfect or 
confused recollection. But the blunders are not gross 
ones, as is usually the case in his comments. The mis- 
takes, the exaggerations, the omissions, the jumbling 
together of events out of their proper order, tend, it is 
true, to give an injurious impression of the original. 
Still, even when taken collectively, they are not serious, 
especially when compared with the havoc he was wont 
to make with the characters and incidents of other plays. 
There are versions given by him in prose of nearly 
a dozen different passages in the tragedy. Not one 
of them is long ; some are very short. In three instances 
attention is called to the fact that the lines translated 
had been starred by Pope in his edition as worthy of 
admiration. It is clear from these that at the time of 
writing his * Appeal ' Voltaire had the original in his 
hand. Yet with the book open before his e3^es he began 

197 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

his account of the play with a blunder. Horatio, as all 
readers of ' Hamlet ' know, is not a soldier. He is the 
friend and fellow-student of the hero of the play. He 
it is who in the opening scene accompanies the sentinels 
to their night watch to witness the sight of something 
which on their mere report he has been unwilling to 
accept as having actually occurred. He it is who is 
asked to address the ghost, because he is a scholar. But 
Voltaire makes no account whatever of his presence. 
In his outline of the plot he does not appear at all until 
considerably later in the play. Both the soldier who in 
the first scene is relieved, the two soldiers who relieve 
him, and Horatio brought along to be a witness of the 
apparition, are all compressed into two se'ntinels, one of 
whom is addressed by the other as a scholar. This, for 
Voltaire, is not a very gross error ; but there was no 
possible excuse for making any error at all. 

There is another feature which detracts more decidedly 
from the impartiality which was vaunted to be charac- 
teristic of this account. In addition to the necessarily 
fragmentary character of the sketch of ' Hamlet,' all the 
details are accompanied with a running comment of 
direct or implied depreciation. Yet this meagre abstract, 
this imperfect and one-sided account of the play, from 
which no one could get the remotest conception of its 
real interest or power, was complacently put forward as 
an exact and lifelike portrayal. " Such," asserted the 
reputed author, Jerome Carr^, " is precisely the famous 
tragedy of ' Hamlet,' the masterpiece of the London 
theatre. Such is the work which is preferred to CVwwa." 
At the time of its publication men could never have had 

198 



THE APPEAL TO THE NATIONS 

the slightest doubt as to the identity of J<^r6me Carr^, 
had no other source of information been available, after 
he had told us, as he did in this treatise, that it was 
Voltaire who had been the first to make known to his 
countrymen the beauties of Shakespeare. This, like the 
reference to Addison's ' Cato,' was the burden of the song 
he now invariably sang. Nor did he fail to repeat his 
remark that Shakespeare exhibited certain beauties. He 
conceded here as elsewhere that there were in his writ- 
ings traces of genius and lines full of nature and force. 
In making this admission, which he did constantly, 
Voltaire honestly thought that he was paying the highest 
possible tribute to the merit of the English dramatist, 
and that it was exceedingly to his own credit that he 
was not so offended by his barbarism as to deny him 
the justice which was his due. 

The puzzling question which Voltaire further felt 
obliged to consider was the continuous devotion to 
Shakespeare of Shakespeare's countrymen. How was it 
to be accounted for? How could any one have his soul 
so stirred as to see tragedies like ' Hamlet ' with pleasure ? 
— for he tells us that all the pieces of the divine 
Shakespeare, as he now began to call him ironically, 
were written in this style. How could throngs continue 
to attend their representation in an age which had pro- 
duced the ' Cato ' of Addison ? Of the fact itself there 
was no doubt. It almost shook his faith in human 
nature. It was in this way he descanted upon the 
conventions which he had been coming more and more 
to confuse with the essentials of art if not with art 
itself. " Why should one, after this," he said, " speak 

199 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

to us of the rules of Aristotle, and of the three unities 
and of the proprieties ; of the necessity of never per- 
mitting the scene to be vacant, and of never allowing 
any one to enter upon it or to leave it without manifest 
reason ; of skilfully linking the parts of the plot, of 
giving it a natural denouement ; of expressing one's 
self in noble and simple terms ; of making princes speak 
with the becomingness they always exhibit or should 
wish to exhibit ; of never deviating from the rules of 
the language. It is evident that one can enchant a 
whole nation without giving himself so much trouble." 
For this continuous popularity Voltaire contrived to 
put forth an explanation which, it seemed to him, might 
serve in lieu of a better. It constituted the basis of all 
his subsequent comments upon the perverted taste mani- 
fested by the English in their admiration of Shake- 
speare. The theatre in their country had been and 
remained open to all classes in the community. Sailors, 
shopkeepers, boys, coachmen, butchers, tradesmen of 
all sorts loved passionately spectacular exhibitions. 
Give them cock-fights, bull-fights, prize-fights, inter- 
ments, duels, gibbets, sorceries, ghosts, and they would 
throng to the show in crowds. In this taste too shared 
more than one man of high position. The citizens of 
London found in Shakespeare everything which could 
please those fondest of novelty and excitement. The 
courtiers were swept along by the torrent. For one 
hundred and fifty years there had been nothing better. 
Admiration had steadily strengthened itself, and had 
finally become idolatry. Certain strokes of genius, 
certain happy verses which every one learned by heart 

200 



THE APPEAL TO THE NATIONS 

and never forgot, had gained favor for the rest. These 
beauties of detail had made the fortune of the piece as 
a whole. Such was Voltaire's explanation of the pro- 
longed popularity of Shakespeare's plays. If it was no 
better, it was no absurder than several similar efforts 
to account for it, which have been and still continue to 
be put forth by the countrymen of the great dramatist. 
The play presented one further problem which he 
tried to solve. It consisted in the nature of the inci- 
dents which enter into the development of the plot. 
For the solution which he found for it, such as it was, 
he was indebted to one of Shakespeare's commentators. 
How came it that so many marvellous occurrences were 
accumulated in a single head ? He had here in view 
the whole circle of pieces with which he was familiar. 
His explanation lay in the fact that Shakespeare took 
all his tragedies from history and romances. In the in- 
stance of this particular drama he had simply put into 
dialogue the story of Claudius, of Gertrude, and of 
Hamlet, written entirely by Saxo the grammarian, to 
whom, he piously added, glory be given. All that there 
is true in this remark was taken from Theobald ; all that 
is false — which most of it is — was Voltaire's own. 
Theobald was the first to point out that the remote ori- 
ginal of the plot of ' Hamlet ' was to be found in the 
Danish history of Saxo Grammaticus. He supplied a 
brief summary of the material circumstances of the ac- 
count there given.^ It is from what he found in Theo- 
bald's edition that Voltaire derived all which he said 
about the source of the tragedy. The inferences he drew 

1 Theobald's Shakespeare, ed. of 1733, vol. vii. p. 226. 
201 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

from the information he got were entirely his own ; and 
as was not unusual, they were entirely incorrect. 

Voltaire's ' Appeal ' contained in conclusion some re- 
flections upon La Place's version of Shakespeare. He 
regretted that this translator, whose name however he 
never mentioned, had, out of a false delicacy, not rendered 
faithfully certain parts of Otway's 'Venice Preserved.' 
Still more did he lament that with the same hardhearted- 
ness he had deprived the French reader of some of the 
most beautiful passages of ' Othello.' The failure was un- 
pardonable. For the sake of this French reader Voltaire 
took it upon himself to remedy such scandalous neglect. 
He proceeded to translate a few sentences from the first 
scene of ' Othello,' in which lago, in accordance with 
his character, announces to Brabantio, with all possible 
coarseness, the flight of his daughter with the Moor. 
La Place had given a version of the entire scene. He 
had, however, committed the inexcusable crime of 
softening anything in it which might seem offensive to 
French taste. Voltaire's sense of justice was outraged. 
These coarse passages should have been the ones above 
all selected for exact translation. Furthermore they 
should have been translated in all their coarseness. 
This was the only way to get a proper conception of the 
work of the English dramatist. With the laudable 
object of representing Shakespeare as he really is, and 
of furthermore exposing the unfaithfulness of La Place, 
he himself took the occasion to render a few passages 
from ' Othello.' His scent for garbage was keen, and 
either through ignorance or malice he sometimes caused 
very healthy food to partake of its odor. If he found 

202 



THE APPEAL TO THE NATIONS 

or fancied he found anything objectionable, anything 
suggestive of coarse associations to a coarse mind, he 
took care that it should be produced with a directness, or 
rather a bluntness, which would inevitably carry with 
it sensations of disgust to every one possessed of deli- 
cacy and refinement. What was healthy his touch 
turned too often into putrefaction. All this he called 
giving his countrymen a faithful and correct idea of 
Shakespeare. He was not in the least ashamed of the 
part he played. On the contrary, he took in it infinite 
gratification. It was with peculiar feelings of self-satis- 
faction that he contemplated the result of his labors. 
At the end of his treatise he announced that the reader 
was now in a position to pass judgment in the trial which 
had been conducted between the stages of London and 
Paris. 



203 



CHAPTER X 

THE COMMENTARIES ON CORNEILLE 

" The Appeal to the Nations " seems to have fallen 
flat, so far as that statement can be made of any work 
written by Voltaire. For those who knew nothing of 
the English dramatist it was unnecessary. Upon them 
it could have no other effect than to impart a still 
darker shade to the density of their ignorance, and to 
confirm them still more in their indisposition to be 
enlightened. For them on that very account interest 
was lacking. They were so perfectly satisfied with their 
own stage that they did not even care to learn about 
the stage of another country. On the other hand to 
those who really knew something of Shakespeare the 
treatise was shallow and inconclusive. Its sophistry 
and unfairness were obtrusively apparent. Of these 
two classes of readers the former was at that time in 
the vast majority. The little impression made on its 
indifference by this appeal can be inferred from the con- 
duct of the Comte d'Argental, Voltaire's faithful friend 
and supporter. Though sent to him to superintend its 
publication, he did not deem it worth while to mention 
it in his letters. " The dissertation against the barbarous 
English," wrote Voltaire, "you do not speak of it.'".i 

1 Letter of Feb. 16, 1760. 
204 



THE COMMENTARIES ON CORNEILLE 

As an offset to this silence the members of the class 
who knew even a little of English literature, did not 
speak well of it. When the treatise was republished in 
1764 in the volume entitled Contes de Guillaume Vade, 
its futility and unfairness struck Grimm, one of Vol- 
taire's warmest admirers. " I should like to take away 
from it," he wrote of the volume, " only the observa- 
tions upon the English theatre. Jerome Carre does 
not exhibit good faith, and expresses several rash 
judgments." ^ 

The subject, however, continued to prey upon Vol- 
taire's mind. A very short time before the treatise was 
written he had been deeply agitated by the information 
that Mademoiselle Clairon, who was to take the part of 
Am^naide in his tragedy of Tancrede, was proposing to 
hang the theatre in black and to erect a scaffold in the 
third act. He wrote to all his friends about the matter. 
He expostulated with the great actress herself. " Let 
us not imitate," he said to her, " that which makes the 
English odious. Never did the Greeks, who understood 
so well the art of stage representation, think of this 
invention of barbarians." ^ He had clamored, he cried, 
during thirty or forty years for more action, for more 
spectacular exhibition in these dialogues in verse which 
went under the name of tragedies. But while he had 
asked for more water, he had not desired a deluge. 
" To prepare a scaffold," he wrote further, " for the 
mere pleasure of putting there some hangman's assist- 

1 Grimm, Correspondance litt^raire (1829), 15 Mai, 1764, tome iii, 
page 476. 

"^ Letter of Oct. 16, 1760, to Mademoiselle Clairon. 

205 



SHAKESPEARE ANT) VOLTAIRE 

ants, is to dishonor the only art in which the French 
distinguish themselves ; it is to sacrifice propriety to 
barbarism." The more he thought of the matter, the 
greater became the state of excitement into which he 
worked himself. Such an abominable proceeding, he 
declared, was good only for the English stage.^ Study 
their philosophy, he cried, imitate their liberality of 
thought, but guard against imitating their savage scene.^ 
How can the French public, he wrote on another occa- 
sion, adopt the English barbarism, the English vio- 
lence, the English conduct of an English play ? " Poor 
French," he ended, " you are in mire of every sort." ^ 
Restore the reign of good taste, was his almost despair- 
ing appeal. 

He felt the need of active measures to arrest the 
decadence which in his opinion was overtaking the 
French stage. When he had first brought Shakespeare 
to the attention of his countrymen, he had never once 
dreamed of the position that dramatist was speedily to 
occupy. That any one — at least outside of England — 
should place him on a level with Corneille and Racine, 
had probably never occurred to his thoughts. That in 
particular, any Frenchman should exalt him above those 
authors, had it appeared to him possible, would have 
struck him with horror as well as indignation. It was 
because of this security that he had allowed himself to 
speak of him in terms which he was now disposed to 
regret. He began to reproach himself for what he had 

1 Letter to the Marquise du DefEand, Oct. 27, 1760. 

2 Letter to Thieriot, Oct. 27, 1760. 

8 Letter to D'Argental, Dec. 15, 1760. 
206 



THE COMMENTARIES ON CORNEILLE 

done. " I have unhappily," he wrote later to the Abbd 
d'Olivet, " been the first who has made English poetry 
known in France. I have spoken some good of it, just 
as one praises an awkward child in the presence of a 
child that one loves, when it wishes to excite the latter's 
emulation. I have been taken too much at my word." ^ 
For Voltaire was fully persuaded that Shakespeare 
would never have been known in France at all, had he 
not taken the pains to introduce him to its notice. In 
consequence he regarded it as the duty of his country- 
men to adopt the view of him which he liad formed and 
expressed. That others should go beyond his scanty and 
imperfect appreciation was something not to be endured. 
He had, however, grown to be aware that even among 
his own countrymen there were those who had come to 
look upon the ill-favored child as preferable to the 
beautiful one. There was unquestionably a party form- 
ing in France who were disposed to talk despitefully of 
the stately and dignified deity of French tragedy, and 
pay their worship instead to ugly and outlandish gods. 
He wrote to an Italian on the ridiculous deference paid 
by some men of that country to Dante ; but he admitted 
the existence of its counterpart in his own land. 
" There are found with us," he said, " in the eighteenth 
century, persons who struggle to admire imaginations 
as stupidly extravagant and as barbarous. These they 
have the brutality to oppose to the masterpieces of 
genius, of wisdom, and of eloquence which we have 
in our tongue. tempora ! judicium .^ " ^ With his 
dislike of this body of men was coupled his detestation 

1 Letter of April 25, 1764. ^ Letter to Bettinelli, March, 176L 

207 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

of the Jansenists, who exhibited a Puritanic hostility 
to the art he loved. " I should not know," he wrote 
to D'Argental, " how to end this long letter, without 
telling you to what a degree I am revolted by the absurd 
and debasing presumption with which men still affect 
not to distinguish the theatre of the fair from the theatre 
of Corneille, not to distinguish Gilles from Baron. It 
casts an ugly opprobrium upon the only art which is 

able to put France at the head of all nations I 

had rather see the French stupid and barbarous as they 
were twelve hundred years ago than to see them half- 
civilized. " ^ 

It was in a measure feelings of such a character that 
prompted him to engage in a new undertaking. This 
was a commentary upon the plays of Corneille, or rather 
upon those of them which he deemed worthy of com- 
ment. He began this task in 1761 and labored at it 
assiduously for many months. The work partook neces- 
sarily of the nature of drudgery ; though he said on one 
occasion that it was better to write annotations upon 
Corneille than to read what other people were then 
writing. France was at that time engaged in its dis- 
astrous war with England, in which every day brought 
the report of fresh losses. " All the news afflict me," he 
wrote ; " all the new books tire me." ^ There 'were two 
objects in particular which he professed to keep in view 
in undertaking what to a man of genius must have 
seemed the most tedious of occupations. One was' to 
fix the language. It was on the ground that it was 

1 Letter of June 21, 1761. 

2 Letter to the Marquise du Deffand, Aug. 18, 1761. 

208 



THE COMMENTARIES ON CORNEILLE 

daily becoming more corrupt. The attempt was a 
dream once cherished, the reason for it a belief once 
held by great writers. With the advance of linguistic 
knowledare both have now been left to those who are 
not great, and who cannot write. The other object was 
to establish a standard by which to test the excellence 
of dramatic productions. As Voltaire said himself, his 
aim was to be useful to the younger generation whose 
tastes had not as yet been formed. In his secret heart 
he felt it was desirable to save them from the devilish 
devices of the spoilers who were intent upon destroying 
the beautiful fabric of French tragedy. Accordingly 
his commentary upon the plays, with the aid derived from 
the members of the Academy, was to form a treatise on 
both grammar and poetics.^ It was to show men how 
to write and what to think. 

But it was not solely for the benefit of his country- 
men, or from admiration of the author whom with a 
proud humility he called his master, that he was led to 
assume the drudgery of this task. It was generously 
undertaken and indefatigably carried through for the 
sake of the grand-niece of the great dramatist, whom he 
had adopted as a member of his family. As he spent 
upon the Avork much time and toil he was happy to find 
at last that the profits from it had secured the dowry of 
a portionless girl. He set about insuring the pecuniary 
and literary success of the undertaking with his wonted 
skill and assiduity. In all such enterprises Voltaire, 
while affecting the guilelessness of the dove, invariably 

1 Letter to D'Argental, June 26, 1761, and to the Abbe d'Olivet, 
October, 1761. 

14 209 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

exhibited the possession of a double portion of the wis- 
dom of the serpent. He aimed to secure for the work 
the sanction of the French Academy, and as far as 
possible its co-operation. He succeeded in wheedling 
that respectable body into a sort of responsibility for his 
criticisms upon language. Into ratifying his decisions 
upon the merits of his author, it declined to be dragooned. 
It is further a striking proof of the tremendous influence 
then wielded by Voltaire that subscriptions to the work 
came not only from his own country but from all parts 
of Europe — from England, from Italy, from Germany, 
from Russia, Persons in high or highest position all 
over the continent contributed their aid. The King of 
France took two hundred copies, the Empress of Russia 
the same number. He had a right to rejoice over the 
result of his labors. "It is a very ungrateful and a 
very disagreeable task," he wrote to a friend, " but it 
has served to marry two young people; something 
which has never happened to any commentator, and 
never will happen again." ^ The labor connected 
with its preparation and publication extended from 
1761 till 1764, in which last year the work made its 
appearance. 

The 'Commentaries on Corneille,' considered as the 
pastime of a great creative genius, is a striking illustra- 
tion of Voltaire's many-sided activity. It is one of the 
enterprises which make his life in some waj^s the most 
astounding in the history of literature. Our wonder is 
heightened by the fact that while he was still engaged 
in this piece of protracted drudgery, he threw himself 

1 Letter to the Marquise du Deffaad, May 9, 1764. 
210 



THE COMMENTARIES ON CORNEILLE 

heart and soul into the conflict excited by the terrible 
tragedy which had befallen the family of Galas. These 
victims of as outrageous injustice as ever clothed itself 
under legal forms stirred every feeling of pity and wrath 
in his nature. The matter lay heavy on his heart. As 
he said himself, it more than saddened his pleasures ; it 
destroyed them. To the task of repairing the iniquitous 
wrong which had been inflicted he devoted himself for 
months which lengthened into years. He listened to 
no dissuasions. Once having taken up the burden he 
never let it fall. Alone, against odds apparently insur- 
mountable at the outset, he set out to remedy this judi- 
cial crime. Single-handed he beat down all opposition. 
He made himself heard by the deafest ears. He con- 
verted indifference into active support ; he animated 
with his o^vn persistency and fire those whom he had 
succeeded in enlisting in the cause. He aroused the 
conscience of all Europe ; he made it share in his 
horror. He overthrew the efforts of the parliament of 
Toulouse to prevent investigation ; he drew upon it the 
execration of all lands. He excited the sympathies of 
foreign sovereigns ; he compelled the indifferent court 
of France for very shame to intervene. Tardy justice 
halted slowly on to right, so far as in it lay, a cruel 
wrong. It could not indeed bring back the judicially 
murdered dead ; but it could restore name and fame and 
liberty and property to the persecuted survivors. It 
was all his own work. Literature can boast no greater 
achievement than was here accomplished by one of her 
most wayward and irresponsible sons. No higher title 
did Voltaire's many productions win for him than that 

211 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

which came to him unsought, as defender of the rights 
of outraged humanity in his rescue of the family of 
Galas. 

Yet the living tragedy in which he acted a chief part 
did not divert thought or attention from that tragic 
stage which he had earlier taken up for consideration. 
All the while he was engaged in this fight for justice 
he never lost sight of his literary enterprise. In the 
one undertaking, however, there was hardly the unmixed 
satisfaction which belonged to his efforts in the other. 
It must be confessed that the work he did on the ' Com- 
mentaries,' though it contributed to the support of one 
of the Corneille family, hardly contributed to the sup- 
port of Corneille's reputation. His great predecessor 
was for Voltaire a sacred author ; but he anticipated 
the higher criticism by finding perpetual fault with his 
divinity. The annotations cannot be said to be written 
in a sympathetic spirit. On one side the reader gets 
from them the general impression that the particular 
thing of which Corneille was profoundly ignorant was 
his own tongue. The language he employed underwent 
constant castigation. Solecisms, barbarisms, violations 
of grammar without number were pointed out. On the 
other side his prolixity, his fustian, his rhodomontade, 
his far-fetched thoughts, his low and ridiculous expres- 
sions, his multitude of bad verses were dwelt upon un- 
ceasingly. As he reached the conclusion of his labors 
he declared that the prodigious number of Corneille's 
faults against language, against clearness of ideas and 
of expression, against propriety, and finally against 
interest, had dismayed him so much that he had not 

212 



THE COMMENTARIES ON CORNS ILLE 

ventured to say the half of what he would have been 
able to say.^ 

The feeling that he had neglected any opportunity 
to point out Corneille's faults was far from being shared 
by the admirers of that author. They made no com- 
plaint that he had not said enough. Great was the 
indignation kindled among them by the ' Commentaries,' 
great the clamor which arose in consequence. Voltaire 
was conscious of the coming of the storm long before it 
broke. But to all the outcry he answered complacently 
that, while admiration was due to Corneille, much more 
was devotion due to truth. His annotations, he knew, 
would not please the fanatic worshippers of the dram- 
atist ; but he cared more for the interests of good taste 
than he did for their suffrages. He had said freely what 
he thought ; it was impossible for him to say what he did 
not think. He had aimed to be useful. In order to be 
useful one must tell the truth. In this respect he had 
done his dut}^ and to him belonged in consequence the 
testimony of a good conscience. Pious reflections of 
this sort turn up with great regularity in his private 
correspondence, and are found not unfrequently in his 
published works. Truth, he kept constantly repeating, 
was to be preferred to anything and everything. Never 
were more glowing eulogiums passed upon it. There is 
something very entertaining in his persistent harping 
upon the necessity of truth in this particular instance, 
when we consider that in his controversial discussions 
there was hardly another thing in the use of which he 
could be more economical, when it suited his purposes 

1 Letter to the Marquise du Deffaad, May 9, 1764. 
213 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

to indulge in it sparingly. It is perhaps even more 
entertaining to find Voltaire constantly affirming that it 
was impossible for him to say anything which he did 
not think. He was naturally the highest authoritj' in 
regard to his own opinions ; unfortunately he was not 
always the most trustworthy. The student of his life, 
in order to know what he does not mean, is too often 
compelled to pay strict heed to what he asserts emphati- 
cally and repeatedly. 

Still, there is no question that in this instance he was 
giving expression to his sincerest convictions. No one, 
indeed, can read the commentary, and along with it his 
correspondence during the time he was engaged in its 
preparation, without becoming aware that the more 
Voltaire occupied himself with Corneille, the greater 
became his dissatisfaction with that dramatist, and the 
profounder his idolatry of Racine. His study of the 
former, he said, led him to find the latter admirable. 
The one enchanted him; the other bored him. "Let 
the world talk as it will," he wrote to a friend, " Racine 
will gain every day, and Corneille will lose." To him 
the former author was and continued to be the great, 
the inimitable. In truth, Voltaire believed in Racine 
almost as much as he did in himself. He was naturally 
not disposed to be too lenient to Racine's great rival. 
It was inevitable that his persistent depreciation of the 
one author and glorification of the other should excite 
the indignation of the partisans of the elder dramatist. 
They were unwilling to accord to Voltaire the monopoly 
of either good taste or of truth ; for of both he constantly 
talked as if they were in his sole possession. They 

214 



THE COMMENTARIES ON CORNEILLE 

intimated that he had confounded two distinct things. 
He had said devotion to truth ; he meant devotion to 
Racine and himself. 

It is not for the men of alien races to interfere in the 
disputes carried on by Frenchmen as to the comparative 
merits of these two authors. To us the interest lies 
here in the fact that Voltaire took in many ways the 
same view of Corneille which he had previously taken of 
Shakespeare. The same language was used about the 
one which had been employed in the case of the other. 
Both were the founders of the stage in their respective 
countries. To them, therefore, was due the glory to 
which the creator is entitled. But they exhibited like- 
wise the imperfections which belong to all early work. 
For their faults the times in which they flourished were 
responsible. Had they come later, they would have 
done better. Both wrote splendid detached scenes ; 
but neither had produced a perfect whole. At times his 
disposition to undervalue Corneille to his own country- 
men led him to go farther. In certain particulars he 
was willing to set Shakespeare above him. It would be 
unjust to impute this merely to a desire to detract from 
the reputation of his predecessor. Of the sins forbidden 
in the dramatic decalogue he saw and said that the only 
one which was absolutely unpardonable was that of 
tediousness. It was the one sin of which Shakespeare 
was never guilty. When, consequently, he came to 
contrast with his works the early plays of Corneille he 
unhesitatingly gave the preference to the former on this 
very account. The tragedies of Shakespeare, he said, 
were still more monstrous than Clitandre ; but they did 

215 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

not bore.^ In one particular indeed he conceded the supe- 
riority of tlie English dramatist to the playwrights of 
every age and clime. " I will confess," he said, " that of 
all tragic authors Shakespeare is the one in whom are 
found the fewest scenes given up purely to dialogue. In 
each of them there is almost always something new. It 
is brought about, to be sure, at the expense of the rules of 
decorum, of truth to life. It is by mingling together 
the grotesque and the terrible. It is by passing from 
a wineshop to a field of battle, from a graveyard to a 
throne. But the result is, he interests." ^ 

Of course the ideal was to arouse and maintain 
interest without the use of those irregular and improper 
agencies which interfere with the purity and perfection 
of dramatic art. To this, Shakespeare had neither 
attained nor thought of attaining. Voltaire, therefore, 
never harbored the idea of putting him on a level with 
Corneille. How could any really high position be given 
to a man who disregarded the unities, who joined in the 
same play the comic and the tragic, who filled his scene 
with acts of violence and bloodshed committed in full 
view of the audience ? From all these gross violations 
of art the French dramatist in his raaturer works had 
been thoroughly free. That one fact of itself established 
his superiority. Voltaire's view of the two men was 
summed up at the conclusion of his observations upon 
' Julius Caesar ' which he appended to his so-called 
translation of that play. " Like Shakespeare," he said 
of Corneille, " he was unequal, and like him abounding 

1 Commentaries sur Corneille ; Remarques sur Mifdee. 

2 Ibid., Remarques sur les Horaces, acte iii. scene iv. 

216 



THE COMMENTARIES ON CORNEILLE 

in genius. But the genius of Corneille was to that of 
Shakespeare as is a lord compared with a man of the 
people endowed by nature with the same spirit as him- 
self." That the commoner always interested, while the 
nobleman frequently wearied, was not to the purpose. 
The former had gained his success by illegitimate 
means. Art consists in interesting by beautiful and 
noble portrayal, not by the production of monstrosities. 
Still, there lurked always in his mind the consciousness 
that the all-important thing is to interest. Perfection 
that wearies can never hold its own against imperfec- 
tion that charms. Was it really beauty that repelled, 
was it monstrosity that attracted ? Voltaire never asked 
himself the question. 

He never indeed was able to free himself from 
the delusion that it would be comparatively easy to 
awaken and maintain interest, if one paid no heed to 
the requirements of what he called art. If the writer in- 
terspersed in his plays duels, sorceries, deeds of violence, 
murders, the attention of the audience could always be 
held. Yet the observations he was constantly making 
failed to sustain the position he took. He complained 
of Corneille that in his early pieces he indulged in these 
improper and reprehensible practices. Nevertheless, he 
as constantly complained that these plays were tire- 
some. He kept repeating that the English dramatists 
who tried to imitate Shakespeare were invariably con- 
demned for resorting to the very devices which, when 
employed by him, were applauded. Success could be 
assured, he told us, by neglecting art ; yet these writers 
had neglected art without securing success. It never 

217 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

occurred to Voltaire that there might be a flaw some- 
where in his reasoning ; that it was not merely the thing 
done which had met with favor, but the way in which 
it was done. He did not reflect that he who wields the 
forces of nature must possess powers that enable him to 
master them, or he will be torn in pieces by the agents 
he has called to his help. In art, the end justifies the 
means. If the great result desired has been attained in 
defiance of the rules we have formulated, the rules must 
be set aside as naught. It is really not art which is at 
fault ; it is our definition of what constitutes art. 



218 



CHAPTER XI 

SECOND APPEAL TO THE NATIONS 

In his ' Appeal to the Nations ' Voltaire had set out 
to display the inferiority of Shakespeare to Corneille by 
furnishing an abstract of the play of 'Hamlet.' It was 
by this agency that foreign peoples were to learn all 
that it was necessary to know in order to form a just 
judgment of the English dramatist. The inadequacy, 
not to say absurdity of the method pretty certainly came 
home to him at last ; it was probably forced upon his 
attention by the words and acts of others. No likeli- 
hood existed that men who really desired to become even 
slightly acquainted with Shakespeare would be content 
with a way eminently designed to impart the show of 
knowledge without its substance. They could learn 
far more about the play in question, and with infinitely 
more accuracy, by reading the partial version of it to be 
found in the work of La Place. 

Up to this time Voltaire had professed to speak a great 
deal for Shakespeare ; he had certainly spoken much about 
him. Still, it was only after the most beggarly fashion 
that he had let Shakespeare speak for himself, even 
through the inadequate agency of translation. He must 
have become conscious that this contrast between his 
words and his acts would strike his countrymen more 

219 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

and more. Accordingly, while engaged in the prepara- 
tion of his ' Commentaries on Corneille ' he made up his 
mind to perform more than he had promised to the sub- 
scribers of the edition. In order to show the difference 
between the lord and the commoner, to exhibit unmis- 
takably the superiority of the French stage to tlie English, 
he set about an undertaking which was to be of the nature 
of another appeal to the nations. This was to append 
to the Cinna of Corneille a translation of the first three 
acts of ' Julius Csesar.' The whole of one play and a 
part of the other dealt with a conspiracy. The treat- 
ment of a similar subject by the two authors would put 
readers in a position to make a test of their comparative 
merits. 

To carry out his object properly it was all-essential, 
he now said, that the translation should be literal ; upon 
this he laid special stress. There was no other one 
thing which he deemed of so much importance, no 
other one thing which he professed, after his work 
appeared, that he had kept more steadily in view. He 
gave a general assurance in the preface to the version, 
and special assurances in notes, that it was a reproduc- 
tion of 'Julius Caesar,' almost word for word, line for 
line. Wherever there was blank verse in Shakespeare 
he had turned it into blank verse. Wherever there was 
prose he had rendered it in prose. What was familiar 
and low in the original had been made familiar and low 
in the translation. On the other hand, whenever the 
language was elevated he had striven to make it elevated. 
When it was bombastic care had been taken to render 
it in the same vein. In fact to passages he so considered 

220 



SECOND APPEAL TO THE NATIONS 

he added notes to the effect that his was a literal trans- 
lation. A statement of this sort is sure to occur when- 
ever he wished to call attention to anything which 
struck him as especially objectionable. He even took 
the pains to furnish explanations of the quibbles which 
he found it impossible to render literally. 

Voltaire's theory of translation had clearly undergone 
a revolution since the appearance of the essay on English 
tragedy which is contained in the Lettres philosophiques. 
There he said that any version whatever is at best but a 
faint copy of a fine picture. The man who attempted 
to give a literal rendering sacrificed the spirit of his 
author to his words. It was in accordance with this 
view that he had put forth those free reproductions of 
two or three passages in Shakespeare which up to this 
time had constituted about all the direct contributions 
that he had made to the knowledge of the English dram- 
atist. But for his present purposes it was desirable 
to follow another practice. It was exactness and literal- 
uess upon which he now came to insist. In public and 
private he prided himself upon the success which had 
attended his efforts in that direction. Before his version 
was published he forwarded it to the Cardinal de Bernis. 
" Here," said he, " is tlie very faithful translation of the 
conspiracy against Csesar by Cassius and Brutus, which 
is played every day at London, and is preferred infinitely 
to the Cinna of Corneille. I beg you to tell me how a 
people wlio have so many philosophers can have so 
little taste." He seems never to have modified the sen- 
timents here expressed. As late as 1776 he condemned 
to an English visitor the version of La Place for its un- 

221 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

faithfulness. " As for me," he continued, " I translated 
the three first acts of Julius Caesar with exactness. A 
translator ought to lose his own genius and assume that 
of his author. If the author be a fool, the translator 
should be so too." ^ 

One is reluctant to impute to a man of genius inten- 
tional dishonesty ; but it is hard to resist the conviction 
that Voltaire's course in this whole matter was de- 
signedly dishonest, both in what he did and in what he 
failed to do. The scheme itself can only be saved from 
the suspicion of deception by imputing to its promoter 
self-deception ; and whatever were Voltaire's other fail- 
ings, lack of comprehension of what he was about is the 
last thing which can be reasonably laid to his charge. 
In the very first place he must have known that his 
method of comparison was utterly valueless. Had the 
conditions been reversed, no one would have been 
quicker than he to point out the fraud which by its very 
nature existed in the course he pursued of testing the 
merits of two authors. No one would have been more 
earnest in denouncing the injustice of an Englishman 
presuming to decide upon the merits of Corneille, as 
contrasted with Shakespeare, by setting even a good 
translation of the former against an original of the lat- 
ter. He had had a full opportunity to observe for him- 
self the worthlessness of all such comparisons. The 
Andromaque of his favorite Racine had been translated 
into Enghsh by Ambrose Philips. In Voltaire's own 

1 Sherlock's ' Letters from an English Traveller,' translated from the 
French original, London, 1780. Letter xxiii. page 152 ; dated Ferney, April 
26, 1776. 

222 



SECOND APPEAL TO THE NATIONS 

expressed opinion it was an excellent translation. It 
was brought out in 1712 under the title of ' The Dis- 
trest Mother,' and was acted not unfrequently during 
the rest of the century. Yet no one then thought of 
putting it on a level with any production of Shake- 
speare. No one reads it now ; no one would contem- 
plate reading it for itself. The work has been left 
hopelessly behind. Were an Englishman compelled to 
derive from it his conception of Racine he would not 
adjudge that dramatist a higher rank in literature than 
the one held by his translator. 

Furthermore, it is perfectly easy to give an author's 
meaning faithfully in another speech and yet produce 
an utterly erroneous impression of his work. Words 
which suggest noble associations in one tongue can be 
rendered by words of precisely the same signification, as 
found in the dictionary of another tongue, while yet in 
the latter they convey commonplace or ignoble ideas. A 
similar statement can be made indeed about any individ- 
ual speech taken by itself. In it two words can exist 
with precisely the same meaning, one of which can be 
used everywhere without giving offence, the other hardly 
anywhere. It is easy therefore to translate an author 
literally and misrepresent him scandalously. To a cer- 
tain extent it is an accident which only the extremest 
familiarity with the two tongues can obviate. It 
occurred now and then in the version of Shakespeare, 
made by Le Tourneur, who was so far from seeking to 
depreciate his author that he was eager to exalt him. 
With Voltaire it was a practice to which he constantly 
resorted. The act may have been sometimes due to 

223 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

ignorance, but there are instances in which the only 
explanation possible is that it sprang from deliberate 
malice or criminal carelessness. There were times in 
which he committed forgery upon his author by imput- 
ing to him Avhat he did not say. A peculiarly glar- 
ing illustration of it occurs in his version of ' Julius 
Caesar.' In a footnote intimating his own faithfulness, 
he called attention to a very gross word which he said the 
original contained. As it was there, he was under the 
necessity of translating it. The necessity was purely 
of his own invention. The word which he complained 
of by implication, was not there. It was never there 
in any edition whatever. A term conveying the same 
idea did indeed appear ; but it was one which could 
have been used before an English audience of any period 
without offence, and has been so used repeatedly. 

But Voltaire's worst act from the purely literary 
point of view was his rendering English blank verse 
into the corresponding sort of verse in French. It was 
as dishonest in intention as it was ridiculous in exe- 
cution. No better expedient could have been found to 
make his version unfaithful to the spirit of his original. 
In the one tongue the measure was a peculiarly power- 
ful instrument of expression. It had in consequence 
become almost sacred to tragedy. Much of the finest 
poetry of the language, much that was most beautiful 
in diction and lofty in sentiment was associated with it. 
Nothing of this sort belonged to it in French. There 
it did not exist at all, and could not exist. Its struc- 
ture was entirely unsuited to the genius of that tongue. 
To render Shakespeare in it was infinitely worse than it 

224 



SECOND APPEAL TO THE NATIONS 

would be to render Corneille into English in alexan- 
diines ; to render him in doggerel would be the nearest 
equivalent in our tongue to Voltaire's proceeding. Yet 
this was the measure which he selected in order to give 
his public a conception of Shakespeare. 

Not content with choosing it, he deliberately mis- 
represented it to those who knew nothing of its character. 
He gave his readers to understand that the measure did 
not differ essentially in French from what it was in 
English. Anybody, he said in the preface to his ver- 
sion, could winte blank verse, — which was indeed true 
of the sort of blank verse he wrote himself. Anybody, 
it can be added, who could make seriously such an asser- 
tion about the English measure rules himself by that 
very fact out of the consideration of any court of criti- 
cism. Yet it was no hasty remark made in the heat 
and hurry of composition or in the ill-humor of momen- 
tary vexation. Later it was repeated essentially in the 
Bictionnaire philosophique.^ There we were told that 
those who had written in blank verse did so because 
they did not know how to ryme ; that blank verse is 
born of the inability to overcome that difficulty, and 
from the desire to do something quickly. Yet he had 
once professed envy of the English for the possession 
of what he had termed the happy facility of blank 
verse. Nor did his words here come into conflict alone 
with assertions previously made ; they conflicted with 
some he was making at the time in the comparative 
truthfulness of his correspondence. 

Under such conditions, therefore, Voltaire's wooden 

1 Under Rime. 

15 225 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

translation would have all the unpoetical quality of 
prose without its accuracy. By the method he adopted 
it was impossible to give any proper conception of 
Shakespeare, had he sought to make liis version a faith- 
ful reproduction of the original. But he really sought 
no such thing. Every step in what he did, as well as 
every statement he made, was tainted with fraud. He 
pretended that his version was a translation of the first 
three acts of ' Julius Ctesar.' It was nothing of the 
sort. Not a single one of the events and speeches, both 
in prose and verse, which follow the assassination of the 
dictator was rendered. As regards mere quantity, the 
part he omitted to translate was about a third of 
the three acts which he professed that he had translated. 
As regards quality, it contains the most striking and 
powerful passages found in them. In it the genius of 
Shakespeare is exhibited in its highest form. It 
includes the flight and return of Antony after the 
assassination, his interview with the conspirators, his 
apostrophe to the corpse of the murdered ruler, the 
address made by Brutus to the people, the funeral 
oration pronounced by Antony over the dead body of 
the dictator, with the portrayal of the tumult which 
followed his speech. Without these, ' Julius Ceesar ' 
would not be the play we all know. It is this part 
more than any other which has caused tlie lofty scene it 
depicts to be acted, as the author unconsciously prophe- 
sied, in states yet unborn and accents yet unknown. 
For Voltaire's purposes the omission was as wise as it 
was dishonest. Even his bald translation could hardly 
have succeeded in hiding altogether the skill and 

226 



SECOND APPEAL TO THE NATIONS 

effectiveness displayed in these scenes. But there was 
an additional reason for its omission. This portion of 
the tragedy had been imitated by Voltaire himself in 
bis Meort de Cesar. Even the faint reproduction of its 
power there found would have exposed the obligation 
which, once acknowledged, he was now trying hard to 
forget. 

But, furthermore, in the part which he translated he 
did not live up to his claims of faithfulness. The 
rendering of prose by prose, of blank verse by blank 
verse was in general fairly maintained. Yet to this 
there were exceptions. These would not be worth the 
slightest notice, were it not for the pertinaciousness 
with which Voltaire kept insisting upon the literal 
exactness he had observed. As one instance, the 
speeches of the tribunes at the very opening of the play 
are in blank verse ; they were rendered by him in prose. 
But much more unfaithful was he in matters of greater 
importance. His version was far from being a line for 
line translation, as he pretended. A goodly number of 
the speeches were cut down from a fourth to a half of 
the length which they had in the original. In not a 
single instance were they expanded. This abbreviation 
was gained by the sacrifice of lines essential for convey- 
ing the full sense. To give a clearer conception of his 
method of proceeding, it may be well to cull a few sprigs 
from the statistical garden. Let us leave aside the prose 
and consider only those parts of the play which are in 
blank verse. In the first three acts of the ' Julius Caesar ' 
of Shakespeare there are about fourteen hundred and 
twenty-five lines written in that measure. A little over 

227 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

three hundred of these at the conclusion Voltaire 
made no pretence to translate. This left somewhat 
more than eleven hundred lines in that portion of these 
three acts of which he in theory gave a literal version. 
They were rendered in nine hundred and sixty-two. 
These statistics are not particularl}' enlivening ; but 
they are very euhghtening. The line for line transla- 
tion disappears. 

But much more serious than this were the misunder- 
standings and perversions of meaning. A sort of excuse 
can be made in the case of certain words, in conse- 
quence of their employment by Shakespeare with a 
signification which in the eighteenth century had be- 
come somewhat archaic. Favor^ for instance, in the 
sense of ' face,' * countenance,' is found three times in 
these three acts. In his two translations of it — once 
he avoided rendering it — Voltaire gave as its French 
equivalent amitie. This necessarily perverted the 
meaning of the passages in which it occurred. Much 
more inexcusable in a man assuming the functions of a 
translator was his misunderstanding of the signification 
of certain common words. At the very time he sub- 
jected himself to a good deal of ridicule in England by 
making in one instance his ignorance conspicuous in a 
note. To the line spoken by Brutus, — ■ 

" Our course will seem too bloody, Caius Cassius," — 

he appended the following sage remark. "The word 
course^'"'' he wrote, " may perhaps be an allusion to the 
course of the Lupercal. Course also signifies a ' change 
of plates on the table.' " 

228 



SECOND APPEAL TO THE NATIONS 

But even such things were slight compared with the 
studied care he took at times to lower the character of 
Shakespeare's language. It was bad enough to render 
the di'amatist's powerful and poetic blank veise by the 
lines much more prosaic than prose, which went under 
that name in French. The fitness of the measure in 
English for tragic representation was due to the fact that 
it could pass at once from the language of ordinary con- 
versation to the highest flights of the inspired imagina- 
tion without strain and without the slightest impairment 
of its dignity. In colloquial speech it could be familiar 
without being mean. Voltaire did not know the dis- 
tinction between the two adjectives in English. We 
can get an idea of his conception of rendering what was 
familiar in the original by a familiar equivalent in his 
own tongue, by retranslating one of the couplets of his 
version. Caesar, in addressing the company which had 
assembled early at his house to escort him to the capitol, 
makes use of the following words : 

" Good friends, go in and taste some wine with me, 
And we, like friends, will straightway go together." 

Voltaire's version of the lines, literally retranslated into 
English, reads as follows : 

" Let us all go into the house, let us drink a bottle together, 
And then like good friends we will go to the senate." 

Not satisfied with this peculiarly choice rendering, he 
appended the following note to the first of the two lines : 
" Always the very greatest fidelity in the translation." 
There was one instance, however, in which he did not 
229 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

call the attention of his readers to the faithfulness of his 
version. This was in the case of a noted passage about 
which there has been and still continues to be much 
comment, though little controversy. Caesar, in replying 
to the appeal of Metellus Cimber for the recall of his 
brother from exile, concludes his refusal with these 
words: 

" Know Caesar doth not wrong, nor without cause 
Will he be satisfied." 

Such are the lines as they are found in the play as handed 
down. But in his ' Discoveries ' Ben Jonson reported 
another version of them. There this passage appears in 
the following form : 

" Caesar did never wrong but with just cause." 

This is cited by Jonson as an illustration of Shakespeare, 
in the heat of composition, giving utterance at times to 
things which were ridiculous. He also quoted them 
sneeringly in the Induction to his 'Staple of News.' 
But whatever may have been the original of the speech, 
there is but one form of it now which has authority. 
There is but one form of it which Voltaire had a right 
to render. But from the note to the passage in Theo- 
bald's edition he had learned of the way in which Jonson 
represented it. This accordingly he chose to translate, 
and not the lines as found in the printed play. It is 
with these words he rendered the passage : 

" Lorsque Cesar fait tort, il a tou jours raison." 

In this instance there is no escape from the conclusion 
that the misrepresentation was deliberate. 

230 



SECOND APPEAL TO THE NATIONS 

Pages could be taken up with exposing the intentional 
unfaithfulness of this most faithful of translations.^ 
Throughout the annotations all the standard devices 
were employed which tend to lower the estimate of an 
author, while professing to treat him with candor. Not 
even was praise spared. One scene in particular, Vol- 
taire pointed out as full of grandeur, strength, and 
genuine beauties. Remarks of this sort gave a fine air 
of impartiality to his criticism, and added force to his 
censure. He assumed constantly a half-apologetic tone 

1 Ab one illustration which must suffice for many, compare Voltaire's transla- 
tion of a short passage in a speech of Portia's with the original. It is where 
Bhe remonstrates with Brutus for the impatience he has exhibited with her, 
when she has begged him to tell her what has caused his peculiar behavior. On 
witnessing his impatience she has left him, as he has bidden her, 

" Hoping it was but an effect of humor, 
Which sometime hath his hour with every man. 
It will not let you eat, nor talk, nor sleep, 
And, could it work so much upon your shape 
As it hath much prevail'd on your condition, 
I should not know you, Brutus. Dear my lord, 
Make me acquainted with your cause of grief." 

The following is the extraordinary way in which this passage appears in Vol- 
taire's version : 

" Je craignis do choquer les ennuis d'un epoux, 
Et je pris ce moment pour un moment d'humeur. 
Que souvent les maris font sentir k leurs femmes. 
Non, je ne puis, Brutus, ni vous laisser parler, 
Ni vous laisser manger, ni vous laisser dormir, 
Sans savoir le sujot qui tourmente votre ame. 
Brutus, mon cher Brutus, ah, ne me cachez rien." 

Was it ignorance or intention that led to this perversion of the sense of the orig- 
inal ? It almost seems as if it must be the latter, for Voltaire called particular 
attention to this passage in a note, in which he said that it was one of those ad- 
mired passages which had been marked by asterisks — that is, in the editions 
of Pope and Warburton. 

231 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

for the dramatist. It was not his fault, it was the fault 
of his age, it was the fault of circumstances, that he so 
constantly violated good taste. He had i-eceived but 
little education. He had had the misfortune to be re- 
duced to the condition of an actor. One ought not to be 
too hard upon a man so situated for seeking the suffrages 
of those to whose favor he was compelled to look for sup- 
port. It was therefore more in sorrow than indignation 
that Voltaire affected to censure Shakespeare's deviations 
from the dignity of tragedy. It was to please the taste 
of a rude and ignorant audience that he had debased the 
majesty of Roman history by making these masters of 
the world talk at times like madmen and buffoons and 
street-porters. It was also in a grieved way that he re- 
prehended his anachronisms, his violations of the verity 
of manners and customs,^ as indicated by the mention of 
papers, exorcists, and other matters peculiar to England 
or to modern times, but attributed by him to the Rome 
of the republic. These constitute the kind of criticism 
that one might expect to find coming from a pedant; 
not from a poet, unless pedantry had overpowered inspira- 
tion. It is somewhat irritating, in addition, to find them 
pompously brought forward by an author who could not 
claim exemption from the same practice ; who, for in- 
stance, in his tragedy of 3IaJiomet, had made one of his 
characters " senator " of Mecca. 

The version of ' Julius Caisar,' taken as a whole, was 
much nearer a travesty than a translation. The French 
word for the discharge of this function, as rendered by 

1 Costume, recently introduced into French from the Italian, is the word 
Voltaire uses. 

232 



SECOND APPEAL TO THE NATIONS 

its corresponding etymological equivalent in English, ex- 
pressed both its intention and its character. Shakespeare 
had been traduced, not translated. The version had 
been craftily calculated to mislead the reader ignorant 
of the original. But Voltaire was eminently satisfied 
with what he had done. He spoke of it both then and 
afterward with pride. He boasted constantly of the 
superiority of the methods he had followed to those of 
La Place, whose translation of Shakespeare was still the 
only one to which French readers had access. That 
translation he censured constantly for its unfaithfulness. 
To D'Argental he transmitted his own in August, 1762. 
" I believe," he wrote, " that you will be convinced 
that La Place is very far from having made known 
the English drama. Concede that it is well to be- 
come acquainted with the excessive intemperance of its 
extravagance." 

In the preface to the version he returned to the 
attack which he had previously made upon La Place in 
his 'Appeal to the Nations.' "We have in French," 
he said, " some imitations, some sketches, some extracts 
from Shakespeare, but no translation. A desire has 
apparently existed to treat tenderly our delicacy." No 
weakness of this sort could be imputed to Voltaire 
himself. From what he now and henceforth wrote, his 
countrymen would inevitably come to the conclusion 
that Shakespeare was addicted by choice to low and 
coarse expressions, to indelicacy of thought, and to 
grossness of speech. It was the inference actually 
drawn and proclaimed by his disciples, Marmontel and 
La Harpe. In this preface reappeared the same version 

233 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

of the opening scene of ' Othello,' which had done duty 
in the ' Appeal.' Against the euphemistic manner in 
which the speeches of lago had in this case been rendered 
by La Place, conveying the same idea as the original but 
in softened language, Voltaire felt called upon again to 
enter a protest. "I do not say," he continued, " that the 
translator has done wrong to spare our eyes the reading 
of this tit-bit. I only say that he has not made Shake- 
speare known, and that no one can tell what is the 
genius of an author, the genius of his time, of his lan- 
guage by the imitations which have been given us under 
the name of translation. There are not six consecutive 
lines in the French ' Julius Caesar ' which can be found in 
the English play." The magnificent mendacity of this 
last assertion — the falsity of which any one who could 
read English could detect at a glance — excites admiration 
and even captivates the imagination by its matchless 
effrontery. It shows how well Voltaire could rely upon 
the ignorance of his readers and their faith in himself. 
Yet even it is perhaps equalled by the assertion which 
follows. " The translation," he wrote of his own, 
" which is here given of ' Julius Caesar,' is the most 
faithful which has ever been made in our language of 
either an old or a foreign poet." 

He had good reason for seeking to give a false im- 
pression of La Place's version. It had now been before 
the public for nearly a fifth of a century. During that 
period, fragmentary as it was and in many respects 
unsatisfactory, it had been slowly but steadil}'^ making 
its way. The genius of Shakespeare was so great that, 
even in the imperfect presentation of it there found, it 

234 



SECOND APPEAL TO THE NATIONS 

was working havoc with the accepted canons of French 
dramatic art. The anxiety Voltaire felt at the growth 
of sentiments hostile to the traditional beliefs and 
practices which still dominated the stage, he made little 
attempt to conceal. His translation of ' Julius Csesar ' 
was preceded by a note to the public which purported to 
come from the publishers. Among other things, it 
pointed out the resemblances and differences between 
the English and Spanish theatres. In both there was 
the same irregularity, the same mixture of tragic situa- 
tion and gross buffoonery in the same piece. In the 
Enghsh drama there was more passion, in the Spanish, 
more grandeur ; more extravagance in Calderon and Lope 
de Vega, more disgusting horror in Shakespeare. Then 
the translator, in his capacity as publisher, displayed 
his wrath by commenting upon the misguided beings 
who had sought to recommend to the French public the 
barbarous practices in which these two nations indulged. 
" M. de Voltaire," wrote M. de Voltaire, " has during 
the last twenty years of his life combated the mania of 
some men of letters who, having learned from him to 
know the beauties of these rude dramas, have beheved 
it their duty to praise almost everything in them, and 
have conceived a new system of poetics, which, had they 
been listened to, would have absolutely replunged the 
dramatic art into chaos." 

Accordingly, to show still more conclusively the 
superiority of the French stage, Voltaire made also a 
translation of the Heraclius of Calderon in order that 
his readers might contrast it with the Heraclius of 
Corneille. This latter undertaking partook rather of 

235 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

the nature of a work of supererogation. The motive to 
enter upon it may have been in part a purely literary 
one ; but it was also largely a personal one. There was 
really no occasion for translating anything of Calderon. 
It was not he who was threatening the supremacy of 
Corneille. It was not he who was loosening the hold 
which French dramatic art had upon the French people. 
The real mischief-maker, the real one to be dreaded was 
Shakespeare. But the introduction of a translation 
from the Spanish author veiled his motive for introduc- 
ing his translation from the English one. So in the 
preface to the Heraclius of Calderon he gravely kept up 
the pretence that both translations were equally neces- 
sary to the object he had in view. "The reader," he 
said, " had already made the comparison of the French 
and English theatres in reading the conspiracy of 
Brutus and Cassius after having read that of Cinna. 
He will in like manner compare the Spanish theatre 
with the French. If after that there remain any dis- 
putes, they will not take place among cultivated people." 
The man who said this had been capable of saying a year 
before it was published, that he pushed his blasphemy 
against his great predecessor so far, that were he con- 
demned to re-read the Heraclius of Corneille or the 
Heraclius of Calderon, he would give the preference to 
the Spanish author.^ 

Voltaire followed up the preface which he put forth 
under the name of his publishers with an avowed 
jireface of his own as translator. In this his intention 
to make his version of ' Julius Caesar ' a sort of second 

* Letter to Cardinal de Bernis, May 14, 1763. 
23G 



SECOND APPEAL TO THE NATIONS 

appeal to the nations was definitely stated. He had 
taken the trouble to supply the readers of all countries 
with the means of comparison. It was now left them, 
he said, to decide for themselves upon the merits of the 
two authors. A Frenchman or an Englishman might 
be suspected of partiality. Here an opportunity had 
been afforded by him to men not influenced by national 
prepossessions or prejudices to weigh the thoughts, the 
judgment, and the style of Shakespeare against the 
thoughts, the judgment, and the style of Corneille. To 
his translation he appended some observations upon the 
original play itself. In it he expressed his wonder that 
races so opposed in genius as the English and 
Spanish should have agreed in the production of 
dramatic pieces which revolted the taste of all other 
nations. For this he recognized that there must be a 
reason. Instead of one he gave four of them. He 
began by assorting that both countries had never known 
anything better. Spaniards must answer for their own 
drama ; but so far as the English stage is concerned, the 
remark was due to Voltaire's profound ignorance of both 
the predecessors and contemporaries of Shakespeare. 
Of the efforts put forth to cause it to conform to 
the classic drama — efforts made years before Corneille 
was born — he never had the glimmering even of a 
suspicion. Nor was the darkness of his ignorance on 
this point ever illuminated by the slightest spark of 
knowledge. He never ceased to repeat that the Eng- 
lish had been unaware of the rules of the unities 
until the era of the Restoration. He never learned 
that some of the Elizabethans had observed them, and 

237 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

that others who knew them had deliberately rejected 
them. 

His other explanations were better. They consist 
essentially in the statement of the fact that these foreign 
pieces do not weary the spectators. He admitted their 
attractiveness in representation. Bizarre and barbarous 
as they were, they never failed to interest. Besides, they 
were natural. The naturalness, to be sure, was of a low 
and base sort. Caesar, who, according to Voltaire's faith- 
ful translation, asks his comrades to take a drink, in no 
ways resembles the real Caesar; for apparently in his 
opinion no high-born Roman would ever contemplate 
such a proceeding, which in its very nature was unworthy 
of the rulers of the world. Further, these plays appealed 
to the fondness of the populace for spectacular exhibi- 
tions. It required a very cultivated taste, such as the 
Italians had possessed in the sixteenth century, and the 
French in the seventeenth, to desire theatrical pieces 
that conformed merely to what was reasonable and was 
judiciously written. Both Lope de Vega and Shake- 
speare had flourished in a time when taste had not yet 
been formed. Consequently these authors had corrupted 
that of their countrymen ; and the inferiority in genius 
of those who had imitated them had served to estabhsh 
their reputations on a still firmer basis. In consequence 
the theatres of these nations had always remained in a 
state of infancy. The French would have been like 
them had not the reign of good taste come in with 
Louis XIV. Still, he conceded that their drama erred in 
turn from too much refinement. He remarked almost 
regretfully that could the movement and action of these 

238 



SECOND APPEAL TO THE NATIONS 

rude foreign theatres be combined with the judgment, 
the elegancy, the nobihty, the decorum of the French 
stage, perfection would be reached, assuming that it 
did not already exist in the Ipliigenie and Athalie of 
Racine. 



239 



CHAPTER XII 

THE CMTIC CRITICISED 

Up to this time Voltaire had paid no attention to the 
criticisms which had been passed upon him in England. 
Of the existence and nature of some of them he could 
hardly have been unaware. Still, assailed as he was on 
many sides and about many things, these probably did 
not affect him seriously enough to provoke reply, or 
even comment. He kept sufficiently well-informed in 
regard to English opinion to know that it continued to 
set Shakespeare far above Corneille. Ridiculous as was 
such a view on the part of the countrymen of Newton 
and Locke, he was compelled to accept the fact. But 
as yet he had come into no personal collision either with 
the supporters of this opinion, or with those who had 
championed the English dramatist against his own 
attacks. Tliis state of things was now to undergo a 
change. 

While Voltaire was appealing directly to the nations 
of Europe, the English had begun to do so indirectly 
and undesignedly. The first proceeding of this char- 
acter which in some slight degree attracted the attention 
of the Continent was the work of Henry Home, who in 
1752 had taken his seat upon the Scottish bench under 
the title of Lord Kames. Ten years later he brought out 

240 



THE CRITIC CRITICISED 

a treatise in three volumes entitled ' Elements of Criti- 
cism.' For a work of the kind it met with much success 
while the author lived ; nor was its sale checked by his 
death, which took place in 1782. Not long after its 
publication it was translated into German. It covered 
a great deal of ground. There was scarcely any topic 
about which tastes differed that escaped Kames's judicial 
eye; though he modestly said that he had omitted the 
definite article before the word ' Elements ' of the title, 
because its introduction would imply that nothing which 
could be criticised had been left unconsidered. He took 
up at the outset the subject of emotions and passions, 
and closed with a discussion of gardening and architec- 
ture. About every point in dispute lie furnished a set 
of rules neatly ticketed and labelled. By these the 
student could test the value of all that he read. By 
them he could ascertain definitely what he ought to 
admire or to disapprove. Furthermore he would be able 
to tell why he admired or disapproved. 

A consideration of the elements which go to the for- 
mation^ of judgment and taste is not apt, under the most 
favorable circumstances, to furnish easy reading. No- 
where in these volumes is the difficulty inherent in the 
subject lightened by any brilliancy of treatment. It was 
serious tln^oughout ; those who disliked it called it dry. 
But one alleviation there is to him whose soul revolts 
at critical discussion in the style of a text-book of law. 
No sooner had Kames laid down his principle than he 
proceeded to illustrate it by extracts taken from the works 
of great writers. The reader was told in each case 
whether the author should receive praise or blame for 
16 241 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

the passage selected. Not unfrequently he was told he 
ought to blame where he felt he ought to praise. But 
whether he agreed in opinion with his legal adviser or 
not, he could not fail to entertain gratitude for the fre- 
quent recurrence of these oases of quotation in the desert 
of dry disquisition through which he was ploughing his 
way. Moreover, it is fair to say that the system of the 
hard-headed lawyer did not turn out in its practical work- 
ings as badly as might have been expected. The old 
Scotch judge had a good deal of appreciation of the 
beautiful, as well as sagacity in detecting weaknesses 
and improprieties of thought and expression. While, 
therefore, his work cannot be called entertaining, it is 
very often suggestive and instructive. Still, its interest, 
at least to us at the present day, consists more in those 
portions of it which the author did not write than in 
those which he did. The extracts are almost invariably 
worth reading, even when the criticisms are not worth 
heeding. 

As regards his judgment of Shakespeare's art, Kames 
was frequently much in advance of his time, though he 
had not freed himself entirely from its cant. In general, 
however, he expressed for the poet the most unbounded 
admiration. He spoke of him as the finest genius for 
the stage the world had ever known. Yet this admira- 
tion did not hinder him from pointing out the blemishes 
which he discovered in the great dramatist. He acted 
consistently as the stern and inflexible lord of sessions, 
who metes out justice, or what he deems justice, with an 
impartial hand. While selecting a large number of pas- 
sages for praise he found fault with others that did not 

242 



THE CRITIC CRITICISED 

conform to the principles of taste lie had laid down. 
He found fault indeed with some which men before and 
since his time have generally agreed to regard with 
admiration. The orbit through which the mind of Shake- 
speare revolved was altogether too vast for Kames to 
measure by any of the critical appliances which he had 
at command. Those views of life which the dramatist 
had divined by the intuitive perception of genius had 
never been suggested to the Scotch judge by anything 
he had met with in his limited experience. Still if he 
found something to blame, he found far more to praise ; 
and the unstinted measure with which he dealt out his 
commendation is one proof of how much the reputation 
of the great Elizabethan had risen, not indeed with the 
mass of men, but with the critical fraternity, during the 
course of the century. 

But Shakespeare's writings were far from being the 
only works from which extracts were derived. Illustra- 
tions of the principles he laid down were taken from 
several of the most eminent authors of ancient and 
modern times. Among these Corneille and Racine 
received a good deal of attention. Their various errors 
were pointed out with an unsparing hand. It was 
rarely the case that examples were chosen from them to 
exhibit beauties of expression ; while to exemplify faults 
their writings were drawn upon lavishly. In truth the 
whole French drama itself was attacked in general 
terms as having been composed in a style, formal, 
pompous, and declamatory, which suited not with the 
expression of any passion whatever. Not satisfied with 
criticising the dead, Kames in one instance made a 

243 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

target of the living. The writings of Voltaire formed a 
pretty constant subject of comment. 

Much of what he said could hardly have furnished the 
French author agreeable reading. The Henriade, in 
particular, came in for a great deal of severe criticism. 
That work disagreed with all the principles of art 
which Kames had laid down. He found fault with the 
subject. An epic poem no one ought ever to think of 
rearing upon recent and well-known events in the history 
of one's own country. He found fault with the verse. 
No subject of that important nature could be clothed in 
ryme, and supported by it on an elevated plane. Tasso 
and Ariosto had both suffered on this account ; far more 
Voltaire. In fact an epic poem could not be produced 
anyway in the French tongue. The very character of 
the language forbade it. This was one of the prejudices 
prevailing among his own countrymen which the writer 
of the Ifenriade had long before felt called upon to 
combat. Here it was reiterated almost offensively. 
Furthermore Kames found fault with the treatment. 
Voltaire had no business to introduce imaginary beings 
into a work filled with well-known historical personages. 
The blending of fictitious characters with real ones was 
bad enough under any circumstances ; but the introduc- 
tion of such creations as the god of Sleep, the demons of 
Discord, of Fanaticism, and of War, in a history so 
recent as that of Henry IV., was simply intolerable. He 
further censured the love-episode in the poem as insuffer- 
able in consequence of the discordant mixture of 
allegory with real life. 

Voltaire, like most men who are liberal in their 
244 



THE CRITIC CRITICISED 

criticism of others, was keenly sensitive to any reflections 
made upon his own writings. Those of his countrymen 
who presumed to discharge that office were, in his 
opinion, either the vilest of the vile or were acting under 
the influence of a mahgnant diabolical spirit. He had 
likewise none of tliat reticence which is supposed to 
characterize and generally does characterize great souls. 
If anytliing hurt him, he cried aloud. Not unfrequently 
he shrieked, he filled the air with exclamations of pain. 
He burdened his letters to his friends with complaints of 
the way in which he was made an object of persecution. 
It was on the side of literature that he was perhaps 
most sensitive. His supremacy there had hardly been 
denied by those who objected most violently to his 
religious and political opinions. It was often conceded 
grudgingly ; nevertheless it was conceded. To attacks 
of this nature, coming from a man of the character and 
position of Karnes, he was not accustomed. It must 
have been nearly two years after the publication of the 
Scotch judge's work, before he came to know of its 
existence. The reading of it cut him to the quick. 
His resentment was aroused not merely by the character 
of the strictures upon himself and others, but by the 
quarter from which they came. It was bad enough that 
any person whatever, besides pointing out particular 
defects of the French dramatic writers, should assert 
frequently and imply constantly their general inferiority 
to Shakespeare ; but that this man should be a Scotch- 
man was in his eyes adding insult to injury. Appar- 
ently he would as soon liave expected criticism from an 
Eskimo. 

245 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

He sought at once to take vengeance for the affront. 
His review of the work of Karnes appeared in 1764 in 
the Gazette Utteraire de V Europe. This was a periodi- 
cal started a short time before, in which he took a good 
deal of interest. Hume was at that time in Paris and 
heard of the projected criticism before it appeared ; 
for everything that Voltaire did or was going to do 
was widely discussed in the literary circles of that city 
both before and after it was done. Hume was not 
specially intimate with Karnes ; but he had that patriotic 
instinct which prompts every Scotchman of letters to 
stand up for every countryman, reputable or disreputable, 
who belongs to his profession. He tried to prevent the 
publication of the review. Naturallj^ it was to no pur- 
pose. " Our friend, I mean your friend, Lord Kames," 
lie wrote to Dr. Blair, " had much provoked Voltaire, 
who never forgives, and never thinks any enemy below 
his notice." He then gave an account of the article which 
had appeared in the Gazette Utteraire and of his own 
ill-success in keeping it from the public. " I tried," he 
continued, " to have it suppressed before it was printed ; 
but the authors of that Gazette told me that they durst 
neither suppress nor alter anything that came from 
Voltaire. I suppose his lordship holds that satiric wit 
as cheap as he does all the rest of the human race ; and 
will not be in the least mortified by his censure." ^ 

It is hardly necessary to say that Voltaire's review is 
delightful reading. He could always be depended upon 
to be entertaining. He was so witty, indeed, that he 
was even witty when he tried to be. He could not 

1 Burton's Hume, vol. ii. p. 193; Letter of April 26, 1764. 
246 



THE CRITIC CRITICISED 

indeed save himself from perpetrating a blunder ; he 
began with a most unnecessary one. Frenchmen have 
never been noted for the accuracy with which they 
reproduce foreign names ; and it must be admitted that 
for the man of any nationalit}' not to commit this par- 
ticular error in the case of another speech requires not 
only extensive knowledge but perpetual vigilance. But 
of all offenders in this respect Voltaire was much the 
worst. It seems to have required great familiarity on 
his part with an English author to enable him to spell 
his name correctly. lie played all sorts of fantastic 
tricks with the letters. lie varied their order. He 
substituted others for those which the man himself had 
chosen to employ. If a letter was doubled he omitted 
one ; if it was single he doubled it. For illustration, 
Addison's name usually appeared as Addisson or Adisson. 
Walpole was sometimes Wal})ool, Van Brugh was 
Wanbruck, Otway was Otwai. Mistakes of this sort, of 
no great importance in themselves, could be pardoned 
were they the mere accident of momentary inattention 
or of a failing memory ; but some of the most flagrant 
examples are where the author's names must have been 
before his eyes. The present is a case in point. Lord 
Kames appears as " Lord Makaimes." 

Towards his newly created Lord Makaimes, Voltaire 
maintained throughout an ironically deferential tone. 
" No one," he remarked, " can have a profounder knowl- 
edge of nature and the arts than this philosopher, and 
he puts forth every effort to render the world as wise as 
he is himself. He proves to us at the outset that we 
have five senses, and that we feel less the pleasant im- 

247 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

pression made upon our eyes and ears by colors and sounds 
than we do a kick on the leg or a knock on the head. . . . 
He teaches us that women pass sometimes from pity 
to love. ... In considering the measurements of time 
and space we come mathematically to the conclusion 
that time seems long to a girl who is going to be 
married, and short to a man who is going to be hanged." 
It was in this way he travestied some of the statements 
and arguments in the work. After further criticising 
Kames's censures of Corneille and Racine, and his 
assertions of their inferiority to the divine Shakespeare, 
Voltaire indulged in an ironically contemplative comment 
upon the treatise itself and the country from which it 
came. " It is a wonderful result of the progress of 
human culture," he observed, " that at this day there 
come to us from Scotland rules' of taste in all the arts, 
from epic poetry to gardening. Every day the mind of 
man expands, and we ought not to despair of receiving 
ere long treatises on poetry and rhetoric from the 
Orkney isles. True it is," he added with apparent 
regretfulness, " that in this country we still prefer to 
see great artists than great discoursers upon the arts." 

In this reply to Kames care had been taken not to 
say anything of the Henriade. No indication was given 
that a single word had appeared in the work criticised 
to the discredit of the author of that epic. Voltaire was 
altogether too crafty to proclaim aloud his own personal 
grievances. The bare mention of these would have been 
certain to send to the study of this treatise the hostile 
critics of his own country. Without this particular 
incentive he could rely upon their not being tempted to 

248 



THE CRITIC CRITICISED 

look into an English book upon such a subject. He 
therefore took care that no hint should be given that 
either he himself or his views had been attacked. It 
was not his own cause that he represented himself as 
defending. It was that of Corneille and Racine, and 
therefore that of taste and art. He is none the less to 
be credited with perfect sincerity. There is no question 
that he honestly believed that the adoption by the 
French of the methods of the English stage would be a 
return to barbarism. Yet, for all that, the feeling which 
inspii'ed his article was personal, and not national. The 
sensitiveness he showed both then and afterwards to the 
censures of Karnes proves conclusively how much nearer 
to his heart was his anxiety about his own fame than 
about the fortunes of French literature. It was not 
care for the reputation of Corneille and Racine that 
troubled him ; it was care for his own. The condem- 
nation of the Henriade as a failure, coming as it did 
from a comparatively obscure Scotch judge, could hardly 
have affected him more had it been pronounced by 
Aristotle himself. His resentment ceased only with 
his life. 

The biographer of Mrs. Montagu tells us that Kames 
read to her the article of Voltaire, not only laughing 
himself but raising inexpressible laughter in his listener.^ 
Of the amusement it gave the lady, we need feel no 
doubt. That of the former probably resembled more 
the grim sort of smiling which an Indian exhibits when 
tortured at the stake. Yet Kames could not have failed 
to recognize the effectiveness of the blow he had dealt. 

^ Doran's 'Lady of the Last Century,' p. 163. 
249 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

It made itself more apparent as time went on. Voltaire 
speedily returned to the attack. A few years after 
came out his story entitled U Homme aux quarante ecus. 
It concludes with a supper at which many subjects are 
discussed. In the report given of the conversation that 
went on, a rough assault is mentioned as having been 
made upon the French stage by a Scotch judge, who had 
taken it into his head to lay down rules of taste, and 
to criticise some of the most admirable passages of 
Racine without knowing French. Not satisfied with 
this allusion, Voltaire appended a note. Its object was 
to illustrate by a remarkable example how this great 
Scottish judge instructed his readers as to the manner 
in which heroes of tragedy ought to express themselves 
in order to express themselves with esprit. The passage 
selected was the speech made by Falstaff in presenting 
his prisoner. Sir John Colevile, to Prince John of 
Lancaster in the second part of ' Henry IV.' ^ Kames 
had introduced it into his work as a specimen of wit in 
the thought, and particularly of that sort of wit which 
is created b}' ludicrous images. Voltaire seized upon 
the citation. He translated it in full. To his version 
he added the comment that this absurd and abominable 
gallimaufry, very frequent in the divine Shakespeare, is 
what Mr. John Home proposes as the model of good 
taste and wit in tragedy. " But, in recompense," he 
added, " Mr. Home finds the Iphigenie and the Phedre 
of Racine extremely ridiculous." 

The representation of Kames as not knowing French, 
it suited Voltaire to assert, apparently on the ground 

* Act iv. sc. 3. 

250 



THE CRITIC CRITICISED 

that had he known French he would not have made the 
criticisms he did. The further assertion that because 
exception had been taken to certain passages in Racine's 
plays, these plays had been found extremely ridiculous, 
is merely an illustration of that convenient and delight- 
ful kind of memory which enables its possessor, whenever 
it suits his purpose, not only to forget what the object 
of his attack has said, but to recollect what he has not 
said. But his comments upon his own critic are of slight- 
est importance when contrasted with those to which 
he gave free scope upon the extract from Shakespeare. 
No more amusing set of blunders, exhibiting all sorts of 
misconception and misinformation, was ever perpetrated 
by Voltaire himself than what he accomplished in the 
limits of this brief note. We need not find too much 
fault with his calling ' Henry IV.' a tragedy, or with his 
representation of Falstaff presenting his prisoner to the 
king instead of the king's son, or with his christening the 
author whom he was criticising with the name of John 
instead of Henry. Petty details of this sort, he would 
have said contemptuously, are not worth heeding. But 
why does he style the speech he translated a piece of 
abominable buffoonery ? Why is it utterly inappropriate 
to be said b}'^ the person speaking it, or to be heard by 
the person to whom it is spoken ? Voltaire gives us to 
understand the reason in introducing his version of 
the passage in question. It is inappropriate, it is 
buffoonery, because it comes from the Lord Chief 
Justice. As he had converted a younger son of the 
king into the king himself, so he further proceeded to 
elevate Falstaff to this high judicial position. It is the 

251 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

putting a speech of such a character into the mouth of 
such a dignitary that led him to regard the passage as 
absurd and abominable. The blending of the Lord Chief 
Justice and Falstaff into one person — especially con- 
sidering their relation to each other in the play — is as 
amusing as anything that Falstaff has been reported 
by Shakespeare as ever having uttered himself. 

The origin of the blunder is easy to trace. In the 
list of the personages of the play in the editions to which 
Voltaire had access, the Lord Chief Justice appears 
simply under that title. His name is not given. He is 
immediately followed by Sir John Falstaff. Voltaire 
had gathered whatever knowledge he then possessed or 
remembered of these two characters, not from reading 
the piece itself, but from reading the extract taken from 
it by Kanies, and from consulting the list of dramatis 
personae printed at its beginning. When he saw the 
two in close conjunction, he jumped to the conclusion 
that Falstaff and the unnamed Lord Chief Justice, who 
preceded him on the page, were one and the same 
person. It is not the only instance in which he mani- 
fested the amazing extent of his ignorance of this 
famous character. As in the tale just mentioned he 
had raised him to high judicial position, so in his 
' Philosophical Dictionary ' he promoted him corres- 
pondingly in the military service. A part of the 
article on ' Taste ' in that work was given up to point- 
ing out the superiority of the great French to the great 
English dramatist. " One does not see in Corneille," 
he remarked, " an heir to the throne talking to a general 
of the army with the beautiful naturalness which 

252 



THE CRITIC CRITICISED 

Shakespeare sets forth in the Prince of Wales who 
subsequently became Henry IV." Then follows a 
translation of the speech of the Prince to Falstaff in 
reply to the inquiry of the latter as to the time of day.^ 
Voltaire's criticism is interesting for the ignorance both 
of English literature and of English history which it 
displays. It is hardly necessary to say that the Falstaff 
of Shakespeare became a general of the army about the 
time the Prince of Wales, with whom he converses, 
became king under the title of Henry IV. 

In another article ^ in this same ' Philosophical Diction- 
ary, Voltaire made some further comments upon his 
Scotch critic. He was engaged in his favorite occupa- 
tion of celebrating the beauty of certain passages in 
Racine. One of them contained a line which had fallen 
under the condemnation of Kames. He turned abruptly 
aside from his disquisition on the beauty of sentiment 
and of verse to be found in the play he was considering, in 
order to inform the world that a Scotch judge, who has 
sought to give rules of poetry and of taste to his country- 
men, has declared that he does not like the verse, — 

" Mais tout dort, et I'armee, et les vents, et Neptune." 

Had he only known that it was an imitation of Euripides, 

it might perhaps have found favor in his eyes ; but he 

prefers the answer of the soldier in the first scene of 

' Hamlet,' 

" Not a mouse stirring." ^ 

1 Henry IV. Part 1, act i. sc. 2. 

2 Art dramatique. 

3 Voltaire translates these words here, Je n'ai pns entendu une souns 
trotter, in another place, Je ti'ai jias ru trotter une souns. 

253 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

This is natural, he represents Kames as saying ; this is 
the way a soldier ought to speak. Voltaire's further 
comment sets sharply before us the difference in the 
point of view from which tragic representation was then 
looked at by the two nations. " Yes, my lord judge," 
he wrote, "it is natural in a guard-house, but not in a 
tragedy. Know that the French against whom you 
inveigh, admit simplicity, but not what is low and coarse. 
One must be sure of the goodness of his taste before 
establishing it as law. I am sorry for the litigants, if 
you judge them as you judge poetry." 

Voltaire himself never had the slightest doubt of the 
goodness of his own taste. That a Scotchman should 
presume to have a taste opposed to his filled him with 
disgust. Kames had furnished him with many oppor- 
tunities for experiencing this feeling. There were 
several passages in his work in which the views enter- 
tained by Voltaire were controverted, though with no 
mention of his name and possibly with no thought of 
him personally. The doctrine of the unities in particular 
had been attacked with much vigor. Views of this sort 
might have been put forth without subjecting their 
holder to comment; not so the strictures upon the 
Henriade. Voltaire showed how profoundly he had 
been irritated by them in the defence he kept making, 
never ostensibly of himself, but always of his country- 
men. " The author of the three volumes of the 
' Elements of Criticism ' " he wrote, " censures Shake- 
speare sometimes; but he censures much more Racine and 
our tragic writers." He admitted the justice of one of 
the criticisms of Corneille, but he went on to assert that 

254 



THE CRITIC CRITICISED 

the French dramatist not only rose higher tlian the English 
one, but that he never sank so low. The opinion would 
have had more weight had he not sought to fortily it by 
examples. These, as we have seen, did not so much 
illustrate Voltaire's knowledge of his art, as it did his 
ignorance of the author he was discussing. 

On his part Kames was surprised — at any rate he 
affected surprise — at the commotion he had caused. 
In a note to a later edition ^ — the fifth edition of 1774 — 
he apologized for what he had said about the Ilenriade. 
His apology remains to this day altogether the best 
thing in his book which is purely original. In a bland 
way he expressed great regret for having indulged in 
tlie strictures he had made, though carefull}^ implying at 
the same time that they were unquestionably true. The 
reading of tliis apology must have been gall and worm- 
wood to Voltaire's sensitive nature, if it ever fell under 
his eye, which it is likely its writer took care that it 
should. It is not at all improbable that the renev\ed out- 
burst against Kames which appeared two years later in 
the ' Letter to the French Academy ' owed its origin to 
this note. It was substantially as follows. " When I 
commenced author," observed Kames, ^ my aim was to 
amuse, and perhaps to instruct, but never to give pain." 
There is something peculiarly delightful to the reader of 
his work in finding its writer saying in all sincerity that 
it had been his principal object to amuse. Coke might 
as justly have avowed such a motive for writing the 
'Institutes.' There is more ground for the assertion 
that it had never been his design to give pain. Accord- 
ingly he had taken care, he said, to avoid commenting 

255 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

upon the productions of living authors. But the 
Henriade had furnished so fair an opportunity to iUus- 
trate the doctrines of the text, that he had yielded in 
this instance to the temptation, and had broken his rule. 
But he had had no idea that his slight criticisms would 
ever reach Voltaire. To his surprise he found that they 
had done so, and that they had stirred up some resent- 
ment. At this he was afflicted. He had no right to 
wound the mind any more than the body. Besides, his 
course showed ingratitude to a celebrated author from 
whom he had derived much entertainment. The only 
excuse he could make was that he had no intention to 
give offence. At this point came in the sting which 
accompanied all this honey. He did not regard it as an 
excuse, he added, that his criticism was just. But as his 
offence was pubhc, he took the opportunity to make the 
apology equally so. "I hope it will be satisfactory," 
he concluded. " Perhaps not ; I owe it, however, to my 
own character." 

It would have required a peculiarly constituted mind 
to regard it as satisfactory. With all his genius Vol- 
taire could not well have concocted a better example of 
that mean sort of apology which does not apologize. 
While professing to draw it out, Kames had turned the 
blade in the wound. He was right, however, in think- 
ing that even the most abject excuses would have been 
of no avail. Voltaire never got over the criticism which 
had censured the Henriade as cold and unnatural, which 
had blamed its action as being too recent and familiar, 
and had declared that its reputation could be only short- 
lived. It hurt him the more because he thought and 

256 



THE CRITIC CRITICISED 

said that Karnes had made some very excellent observa- 
tions ; and the judgment he had displayed in these 
rendered him especially sensitive to the discredit cast 
upon his own production. He cherished his resentment 
to his d}ing day. In his attack upon Shakespeare 
towards the close of his life, in the famous letter sent to 
the French Academy, he could not refrain from bringing 
in again an allusion to his critic. He spoke of him as a 
great Scottish judge who had published a work which 
he was now careful to call, not ' Elements of Criticism,' 
but ' Elements of English Criticism.' In this its author 
had had the misfortune to compare the first scene of 
that monstrosity called ' Hamlet ' with the first scene 
of that masterpiece of French literature, the Iphigiyiie of 
Racine. The old complaint was revived ; the old com- 
parison was lugged in. The mouse the sentinel had 
not seen was once more brought to the view of a French 
audience. It had not actually stirred in the English 
play ; but after the publication of Kames's work it never 
ceased to disturb Voltaire's rest as long as he lived. 



17 267 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE VOLTAIKE-WALPOLE CORRESPONDENCE 

From the blow which the criticism of Kames had in- 
flicted upon his vanity, Voltaire never entirely recovered. 
A little later he had the opportunity of observing another 
example of the perversity of the countrymen of Addison, 
in a quarter where once he would have least expected to 
find it. He could gather from it additional evidence which 
went to show that the fanaticism of the English in their 
worship of the monstrous creations of their favorite dra- 
matist had now taken complete possession of all classes. 
That select company of superior beings in which he had 
found many sympathizers during his residence in Eng- 
land, was giving every indication of disappearing as a 
recognizable body. It had always been limited in influ- 
ence ; it was now becoming limited in numbers. Its 
views lingered in a languishing way in the critical litera- 
ture of the time. But rarely was it the case that they 
were proclaimed in the self-assured tone which had 
formerly characterized their utterance. How far this 
blind admiration of Shakespeare was extending was 
brought home to Voltaire by a correspondence — it is 
hardly proper to call it a controversy — which in 1768 
he carried on with Horace Walpole. The challenge he 
offered was declined with insincerities as flattering as 
any which he himself had ever used. There was an 

258 



THE VOLTAIRE-WALPOLE CORRESPONDENCE 

affected submission to the strength of his arguments. 
He was highly gratified by the extravagance of the praise 
he received ; but it is hardly credible that he could have 
been imposed upon by his correspondent's pretended 
recantation of his opinions. 

Walpole's ' Castle of Otranto ' had come out anony- 
mously at the veiy end of 1764. A few months later 
appeared the second edition, to which he contributed an 
additional preface. In this he acknowledged the author- 
ship of the work, and described the motives which had 
led to its production. It was an attempt to blend two 
kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern. The 
incidents of the story were to be as marvellous and im- 
probable as in the former ; the personages were to think 
and talk and act as naturally as they did in the latter. 
For that reason he had made the inferior characters 
behave and express themselves as they would be expected 
to do in real life. In so doing he professed to have 
followed the example of " that great master of nature, 
Shakespeare." He avowed his approval of much-dis- 
approved passages in the works of that dramatist on the 
ground that they added by contrast to the beauty and 
effectiveness of the play. Among these, a good deal to 
the horror of some professional critics of the time, he 
specifically mentioned the grave-diggers' scene in 
* Hamlet.' 

These sentiments led him to combat the views ex- 
pressed in the ' Commentaries on Corneille ' about the 
mixture of the comic and the tragic in the same play. 
Such a practice had been there declared intolerable. 
Against this assertion Walpole appealed to Voltaire's 

259 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

own words, found in places where it was not his object 
either to recommend or to decry the course adopted by 
English dramatists, especially by the greatest of them 
all. These consequently might be justly supposed to 
reflect his impartial judgment. Of Voltaire himself he 
spoke with respect, indeed with admiration. But he 
added that while he was a genius, he was not a genius 
of Shakespeare's magnitude. He believed — which was 
to some extent true — that he was receding from the 
liberality of his earlier opinions. Contrasting indeed 
his present utterances with his past, Walpole expressed 
himself sorry to see that Voltaire's judgment was grow- 
ing weaker, when it ought to be further matured. 

To maintain that the genius of Voltaire was inferior 
to that of Shakespeare would strike many, perhaps most 
Frenchmen, of that time with as much surprise, not to 
say horror, as it would similarly strike men now to say 
that it was superior. But to no one then would it have 
seemed a greater profanation than to Voltaire himself. 
I have called attention to the fact that, in the preface to 
his translation of ' Julius Caesar,' he had pointed out 
with the serenest satisfaction that any one who took the 
pains to compare his version of Shakespeare's play with 
his own Mort de Cesar could easily decide whether the 
tragic art had made any advance since the days of Eliza- 
beth. But Walpole had not been content with asserting 
Voltaire's inferiority as a dramatic poet. He had carried 
his rank heresy still farther. He had impugned his 
competency as a critic. He indulged in a note to the 
effect that Voltaire's knowledge of the force and power 
of the English language was about on a level wdth his 

260 



THE VOLTAIRE-WALPOLE CORRESPONDENCE 

kuowledge of English history. Of his ignorance of the 
latter he gave a glaring example. To his annotations 
upon Pierre Corneille, the commentator had appended 
remarks upon two pieces of Thomas Corneille, which 
still held tlien their place upon the stage. One of these 
bore the title of Le Comte d'Easex, the favorite of Queen 
Elizabeth. The younger brother did not fare much 
better at the liands of the critic than the elder. A 
great deal had Voltaire to say of the gross perversions 
of truth in this piece, the plot of which was based upon 
events which had occurred so near the time of its produc- 
tion. It could be palliated, but not pardoned, on the 
ground that French audiences were then totally igno- 
rant of English history. Consequently they were not 
affected by the manifest impropriety of representing the 
young Essex and an old woman like Queen Elizabeth as 
lovers. Now they were better instructed. In conse- 
quence such misrepresentations of fact would no longer 
be tolerated. 

Accordingly, from his ample stores of historical knowl- 
edge Voltaire set out to correct the erroi'S of the author 
and to supply precise information to his countrymen. 
With this object in view he was led to give an account of 
the successive favorites of Queen Elizabeth. The first, 
he said, was Robert Dudley, son to the Duke of Northum- 
berland. This lover, he went on to inform his readers, 
was succeeded by the Earl of Leicester. The observa- 
tion did not tend to inspire confidence in the exactness 
of the information he was seeking to impart. By mak- 
ing it he had advertised his ignorance of tlie fact that 
Robert Dudley and the Earl of Leicester were one and 

261 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

the same person. The mistake derived its importance, 
such as it was, from its occurrence in critical remarks 
which laid special stress upon the necessity of accuracy 
in a work of the imagination — a place where accuracy 
is of the very least possible account. Walpole dwelt 
upon the blunder with ill-concealed satisfaction. It was 
not the only error in Voltaire's somewhat pretentious 
historical note of which he could have taken notice. In 
particular the famous story of the cloak, laid at Elizabeth's 
feet, was in it transferred from Raleigh to Essex. He 
contented himself, however, with specifying the con- 
version of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, into two 
persons. This he introduced mainly to show that the 
severe criticisms of Voltaire upon Shakespeare were 
more likely the effusions of wit and precipitation than 
the result of judgment and attention. 

Three years later Walpole brought out his ' Historic 
Doubts on the Life and Reign of Richard III.' Notice 
of this latter work — • he had doubtless never heard of 
the previous one — came to Voltaire's ears. He wrote 
to the author and begged of him a copy.^ Walpole was 
unquestionably flattered by the request. It was like 
an intimation from a great monarch to a commoner 
that his acquaintance was desired. At the same time 
he was disconcerted by it and somewhat disturbed. 
There came into his mind the recollection of the cen- 
sure passed on Voltaire's views, and the comparison 
between his genius and that of Shakespeare, which he 
had made in the preface to his romance. This work had 

1 Letter of Voltaire to Walpole, June 8, 1768, in Lord Orford's Works 
(1798), vol. V. p. 629. 

262 



THE VOLTAIRE-WALPOLE CORRESPONDENCE 

the year before been translated into French. It was 
likely at any moment to fall into the hands of the man 
whose glance swept at intervals the whole literature of 
Europe. The only course which it seemed to him 
proper to follow was to have the opinions which he had 
expressed come to Voltaire's knowledge directly from 
himself. 

This was the action he determined to take. Accord- 
ingly he wrote to Voltaire that while he appreciated the 
honor done him, he felt that with justice to himself he 
could not comply with his request without sending him 
also the volume containing the criticisms he had pre- 
viously expressed. All this was accompanied with 
many marks of homage to the greatness of the man he 
addressed, and many complimentary expressions. The 
historical work, he said, he sent with fear and trembling 
to the first genius of Europe who had illustrated every 
science. Whatever merit there were in his own writings, 
provided any merit existed at all, was due to his having 
studied those of Voltaire. But the other book stood 
on a different footing. In the preface to this trifling 
romance, as he termed it, he had taken the liberty to 
find fault with the criticisms which the French author 
had made on Shakespeare. He could not therefore 
accept even , the honor of Voltaire's correspondence, 
without letting him judge whether he deserved it. " I 
might retract," he continued, — "I might beg your 
pardon ; but having said nothing but what I thought, 
nothing illiberal or unbecoming a gentleman, it would 
be treating you with ingratitude and impertinence to 
suppose you would either be offended with my remarks, 

263 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

or pleased with my recantation. You are as much above 
wanting flattery, as I am above offering it to you." ^ It 
is no easy matter to tell whether the former or the 
latter part of tins final sentence contains the greater 
falsehood. 

Voltaire did not altogether like this letter ; but he 
liked far less the criticism found in the preface to ' The 
Castle of Otranto.' To most of his countrymen one of 
the remarks contained in it would have been more than 
startling. Walpole's friend, the Marquise du Deffand, 
to whom he communicated all these details, was a 
good deal disturbed when she learned of that extraor- 
dinary comparison between the genius of Sliakespeare 
and of Voltaire. With the latter she corresponded, 
though her admiration of his character was clearly not 
equal to her admiration of his abilities. Of these she 
had the then usual extravagant estimate. She could 
not read a line of English ; her knowledge of Shake- 
speai'e was of the vaguest and shadowiest character. 
But the imputation of his superiority to her celebrated 
countryman shocked her beyond expression. She recog- 
nized the terrible nature of the provocation given. 
Knowing Voltaire as she did, she could not conceive of 
his ever forfrivincr it. " You have determined that 
Shakespeare had more genius than he," she wrote to 
Walpole. " Do you believe that he will pardon you ? 
It is all that I — even I — can do to pardon you." ^ 

1 Letter of June 21, 1768, in Cunningham's ' Letters of Horace 
Walpole,' vol. v. p. 108. 

2 Letter of June 28, 1768; 'Letters of the Marquise du Deffand to 
Horace Walpole ' (1810), vol. i. p. 244. 

264 



THE VOLTAIRE-WALPOLE CORRESPONDENCE 

It is right to say here — it is further a symptom of 
the change coming over the national taste — that this 
correspondence between the two men set the Marquise 
a little later to re-reading, as she said, or more probably 
to reading for the first time, the English dramatist. Of 
course it was in the translation of La Place. The 
perusal filled her with enthusiasm. "I cannot express 
to you," she wrote to Walpole, " what an effect these 
pieces have wrought upon me. They have done to my 
soul what Lillium does to the body, they have resus- 
citated me. Oh ! I admire your Shakespeare ; he makes 
me adopt all his faults. He almost makes me believe 
that there is no necessity of any rules, that rules are 
the trammels of genius ; they chill, they stifle. . . . 
There are many things in bad taste, I agree to it, and 
which can easily be cut out. But for the failure of the 
three unities, far from being shocked by it, I approve of 
it, there result from it such grand beauties. . . . Ah ! 
there is a course of reading which pleases me, which is 
going to occupy me for some time." ^ 

But though Voltaire did not like what he read, he 
returned in kind the compliments he had received.^ He 
found the preface to Walpole's historical work too 
short. He praised the philosophic mind of the author 
and his manly style. He told him that his father had 
been a great minister and an excellent speaker, but he 
could never have written so well as did his son. After 
various flattering remarks of this nature he set out to 
reply to what had been said in the preface to ' The 
Castle of Otranto.' He protested against the accusa- 

1 Ibid. p. 279 ; letter of Dec. 15, 1768. - Letter of July 15, 1768. 

265 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

tion that he undervalued Shakespeare ; he complained 
that in the existence of this disposition on his part the 
English were now too much inclined to believe. He 
proceeded to set forth, in the way which had become 
habitual to him, his own services. He had been the 
first to make English literature known to his country- 
men. He had proclaimed the greatness of Locke and 
Newton, and for so doing he had been persecuted for 
thirty years by a swarm of fanatics. " I have been your 
apostle and your martyr," he wrote ; " in truth, it is 
not just for the English to complain of me." As for 
Shakespeare himself, he had long ago said that had it 
been the good fortune of that dramatist to have lived 
in the time of Addison, he would have combined with 
his own genius Addison's purity and elegance. His 
genius, he had asserted, was his own; his faults were 
the faults of his age. 

Not satisfied with defending himself from this par- 
ticular charge, Voltaire proceeded to reply to criti- 
cisms found in this preface in which the excellence of 
Shakespeare was only indirectly involved. The superi- 
ority of the French stage to that of all other nations 
was with him a cherished article of faith. The sincerity 
with which he believed it, the tenacity with which he 
held it, the frequency and fervor with which he pro- 
claimed it, will go far to account for the fury into which 
he later fell as he contemplated the derelictions of some 
of his countrymen in the preference they expressed for 
the English drama and its great dramatist. A quarter 
of a century before, in the epistle to Maffei prefixed to 
Mewpe he had maintained the superiority of the stage 

26fi 



THE VOLTAIRE-WALPOLE CORRESPONDENCE 

of France to that of Greece. He there expressed him- 
self as disposed to believe that a more refined taste 
existed in the modern country than in the ancient. In 
the principal city of Greece, theatrical pieces, he said, 
appear to have been represented only on the occasion 
of the four solemn festivals ; whereas in the principal 
city of France there was always more than one every 
day of the year. Further, at Athens the number of 
citizens was computed at only ten thousand ; while Paris 
had nearly eight hundred thousand inhabitants, of whom 
about thirty thousand were competent critics of dra- 
matic performances, and passed judgment upon them 
almost every day of their lives. 

Remarks of this sort had amused Walpole, as well 
they might. They gave him ample opportunity to 
indulge in somewhat sarcastic comments, of which he 
had not been slow to avail himself. Voltaire had re- 
marked that the familiar dialogue found in the Marope 
of Maffei, natural as it was and agreeable to the char- 
acters and manners represented, would doubtless have 
been well received at Athens ; but he implied that it 
would have met with scant favor at Paris. There, he 
said, they expected a simplicity of another kind. It 
struck Walpole that even thirty thousand men, assum- 
ing the existence of this numerous tribunal, living two 
thousand years after the events made the subject of a 
tragedy, were hardly as competent judges of the manners 
belonging to a Greek play as were the Greeks them- 
selves. The amusement he expressed at the preference 
given to the verdict rendered by the parterre of Paris 
over that of an Athenian audience nettled Voltaire a 

267 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

good (leal. The subject was too important in his eyes 
to be treated jestingly. " You have made game of me 
to some extent," he wrote to Walpole. " The French 
understand raillery ; but I am going to answer you 
seriously." 

And with the utmost seriousness he repeated all his 
previous assertions. " I have believed," he wrote, " t 
believe, and I shall believe that Paris is much superior 
to Athens in the matter of tragedies and comedies. 
Moliere, and even Regnard, appear to me to surpass 
Aristophanes. ... I will say to you boldly that all the 
Greek tragedies seem to me to be the work of school- 
boys in comparison with the sublime scenes of Corneille 
and the perfect tragedies of Racine. " He repeated also 
his previous remark about the audiences of the two 
cities. There were, he declared, more men of taste in 
Paris than in Athens. Against the ten thousand citizens 
of the latter place he brought forward again the thirty 
thousand of the former, who took pleasure in the fine 
arts. Furthermore, one special advantage the stage of 
the one city had over that of the other : At Athens the 
populace attended theatrical exhibitions. At Paris they 
were never permitted to be present save on festival and 
festive occasions, or when no price was charged for 
admission. The polished, the refined, were consequently 
the only judges. In addition, the presence of the female 
sex, with the deference paid to its feelings and wishes, 
had imparted more delicacy to French sentiments, more 
decorum to French manners, more refinement to French 
taste. " Leave us," he cried, " our theatre. You are 
rich enough otherwise." 

268 



THE VOLTAIRE-WALPOLE CORRESPONDENCE 

Without being a^ya^e of it himself, Voltaire in these 
last sentences had hit upon the causes which had been 
mainly instrumental in producing the divergences be- 
tween the stage of Shakespeare and that of Corneille 
and Racine. He had unconsciously pointed out the 
principal agency which had imparted to each its dis- 
tinctive character. The English theatre was the theatre 
of the nation ; the French was the theatre of a class. 
The energy, the liberty, the disregard of useless con- 
ventions which Voltaire had found in the drama of the 
land to which he had come, were not really due, as he 
fancied, to the different character of the people, any 
more than was what was in his eyes its rudeness, its 
license, its disregard of decorum. Similarly the elegance, 
the delicacy, the beauty of the drama of which he 
boasted, did not owe their existence to the character of 
the people he had left behind, any more than did the 
monotony, the lifelessness, the dull dialogue of which 
he constantly complained. 

These are not and cannot be distinctive features of 
the stages of different nations in Avhich the social life is 
essentially the same ; they are the marks which dis- 
tinguish the drama of an aristocracy from that of a 
whole people. Results essentially alike would have 
followed in each country, had the conditions been alike. 
The French theatre was the theatre of the drawingf- 
room, the theatre of women who would shudder at the 
sight of imaginary blood shed in an imaginary quarrel, 
the theatre of men who would turn into jest the utter- 
ance of deepest emotion, or the portrayal of strong 
situations which were outside of the conventional repre- 

269 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

sentations to which they had been accustomed. The 
drawing-room may be dehghtful and beautiful ; but it is 
not the place to develop force and fire. The literature 
of a class will appeal but to a class, nor to that will it 
appeal forever. It is a ho1>house production as com- 
pared with that which springs from the soil and grows 
in the open air exposed to sunshine and storm. It was 
here that French classicism had failed. The country- 
men and contemporaries of Voltaire were becoming 
dimly conscious that something was wrong with their 
drama ; that what it had gained in beauty, it had lost in 
naturalness and power. They were blindly groping 
about for a remedy. They were beginning to realize in 
a vague way that no literature of any sort can succeed 
permanently which does not strike its roots deep down 
into the national character and hfe. 

With these movements of the spirit Voltaire had so 
little sympathy that lie did not even comprehend their 
meaning, and felt indignation whenever he came to 
know of their existence. The long and elaborate letter 
he sent to Walpole was a manifesto in behalf of the 
principles and practices of the French stage such as it 
had come down from the time of Cardinal Richeheu. 
It was of the nature of a challenge ; he spent time and 
thought upon it in order to provoke a reply. It is plain 
that he hoped, and pretty certainly expected that a dis- 
cvission would go on between himself and Walpole, He 
sent his letter to the Duchess of Choiseul, the wife 
of the minister. He asked her to read it, and if she 
approved of his sentiments to have it forwarded. In 
the course of his letter to her he begged her to take the 

270 



THE VOLTAIRE-WALPOLE CORRESPONDENCE 

part of the French against the EngHsh, with whom he 
was now at war. The delusion that a controversy upon 
the comparative merits of Corneille and Shakespeare 
was a national and not an individual quarrel appears, 
perhaps for the first time, to have entered his head. 
Once there, it took complete possession of it. " Judge 
between Walpole and me," he wrote to the Duchess. 
"He has sent me his works," he added, "in which he 
justifies the tyrant, Richard HI., for whom neither of us, 
you or I, care a particle. But he also gives to his vulgar 
buffoon, Shakespeare, preference over Racine and Cor- 
neille, and that is something for which I care a great 
deal." ^ The clown, the buffoon, were now the epithets 
which he applied pretty regularly to the English 
dramatist, especially in his correspondence. Tlie terms 
represented sentiments which he was beginning to en- 
tertain strongly. In public he might speak of Shake- 
speare's beautiful but savage nature, of his tragedy 
which like the earth at the creation was without form 
and void, a chaos out of wliich flashed intermittently 
dazzling rays of light ; but in his private thoughts he 
appeared to him more and more the clownish actor, the 
Gilles who delighted the rustics at market-places and at 
fairs. 

Voltaire, in his letter to the Duchess, had spoken of 
the communication he had received from Walpole as 
a declaration of war. He wished her to be the judge 
of the combat he was carrying on for his country ; 
he wished, he said, to fight under her orders. But 
Walpole had no more notion of accepting a challenge 

1 Letter of July 15, 1768, to the Duchesse de Choiseul. 
271 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

of this sort than he had had of offering one. He may 
yery properly have doubted his abihties when matched 
against those of Voltaire. In truth he was little cal- 
culated to make a defence of Shakespeare, either in 
consequence of the knowledge he possessed, or the 
appreciation he felt, great as in many ways the latter 
certainly was. In his correspondence on this very 
subject with the Marquise du Deffand he remarked very 
justly, as regards the preface to ' The Castle of Otranto,' 
that he had not asserted in it any superiority of the 
English theatre to the French. Such, however, had 
been the state of mind attributed to him in the letter 
which the Duchess of Choiseul had received. The 
impression to that effect was due to a certain way of 
understanding, or rather of misunderstanding, on the 
part of Voltaire, which in cases of this nature he had 
assiduously cultivated. If any one affirmed his infe- 
riority as a dramatist, he invariably managed to mistake 
it for an assertion of the inferiority of the French theatre 
in general and of Corneille and Racine in particular. 
Walpole's disavowal of the charge was doubtless due in 
part to the necessity of considering the national suscep- 
tibilities of his friend, who had been already sufficiently 
horrified by his assumption of the superiority of the 
English dramatist to Voltaire. On other occasions he 
had stoutly maintained to her that he A\^ould be willing 
to be burned at the stake for the primacy of Shake- 
speare. " He is," he wrote to her, " the most beautiful 
genius to which nature has given birth." ^ 

But while these feelings had made him a partisan of 

1 Letters of the Marquise du Deffaud to Walpole, vol. i. p. 243. 

272 



THE VOLTAIRE-WALPOLE CORRESPONDENCE 

Shakespeare, they did not equip hira for appearing in 
the role of his defender. In fact, over him as over so 
many hundreds since, the great dramatist had exerted 
the peculiar power once ascribed to the moon, of addling 
men's brains and making them mad. In this very 
volume, dealing with Richard III., appears the first 
example of that long line of absurd theories connected 
with Shakespeare's life and writings, which give to the 
man of melanclioly temperament and tendencies gloomy 
views as to the immense abysses of asininity in human 
nature which still lurk unexplored. ' The Winter's 
Tale,' in Walpole's opinion, should be ranked among 
the Histories. It had been left to him to discover its 
drift, which had hitherto escaped the notice of critics 
and commentators. It was intended as an indirect 
apology for Queen Elizabeth's mother, Anne Boleyn. 
It therefore constituted in reality the second part of 
' Henry VIII.' The unreasonable jealousy of Leontes 
formed a true picture of that monarch. Passages were 
cited to prove the fact ; and though passages can be 
cited to prove anything, it must be conceded that these 
as marshalled by him form a fairly strong argument 
to show that to be true which we know to be false. 
Walpole's theory was based upon the assumption that 
' The Winter's Tale ' — which throughout he persisted 
in calling ' The Winter Evening's Tale ' — was written 
in the time of Queen Elizabeth ; for it was then generally 
taken for granted that in none of his later productions 
would Shakespeare have been so reckless of geography, 
history, and the unities as he had shown himself in all 
these in this one play. As soon as the assumption was 
18 273 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

proved to be false, the superstructure built upon it fell 
with its fall. 

On any ground, however, Walpole would have been 
justified in not entering into controversy. As he sub- 
sequently said himself, all Englishmen would be sub- 
stantially on one side, and all Frenchmen on the other. 
But he had an additional reason for his disinclination. 
Voltaire, as we have seen, had sent his reply to the 
Duchess of Choiseul to be forwarded. But the Duchess 
of Choiseul was herself a friend of Walpole. More 
than that, she was an intimate friend of the Marquise du 
Deffand, Walpole's correspondent. To her was not 
only Voltaire's reply at once shown, but also the letter 
to the Duchess accompanying it, in which he had ex- 
pressed his indifference to Richard III., and on the other 
hand his expectation of taking part in an international 
quarrel, in which, according to his own account, he had 
now become involved. The two ladies spent the even- 
ing of the day these documents came in reading them 
together.^ The Duchess went beyond Voltaire's ex- 
pectation, and unquestionably beyond his desires, in her 
willingness to forward his communication. He had 
given as his reason for seeking to transmit his reply 
through her instead of the regular channels, that Wal- 
pole's declaration of war, as he termed it, had very 
likely reached him through the Duke. He based this 
belief upon the fact that it was so spirituelle and polished. 
It was therefore natural for him to assume that since it 
was of such a character, it must have found its way to 

1 Letters of Madame du Deffand to Walpole ; letter of July 21, 1768, 
vol. i. p. 251. 

274 



THE VOLTAIRE-WALPOLE CORRESPONDENCE 

him through the medium of her husband, the prime 
minister. It is hardly credible that Voltaire himself 
could have fancied that his correspondent would not 
see through this tliinnest of disguises. His course 
had been dictated merely by the wish to interest the 
Duchess in the controversy in which he was hoping to 
become engaged. As a matter of fact he had himself in- 
formed Walpole of the proper way to send him the 
book for which he had asked ; and there is no reason to 
doubt that it had been forwarded in accordance with his 
directions. The Duchess could be relied upon not to be 
duped by the pretence. She more than complied with 
Voltaire's request. She not only transmitted to Wal- 
pole the reply sent through her, but passed over to the 
Marquise the accompanying letter to herself to be for- 
warded to him at the same time. This latter action 
was of course to be kept a secret. In the general game 
of cheating which was going on, the honors rested 
easily with the two noble ladies. Voltaire was an adept 
HI every sort of finesse ; but by this time he was 
assuredly old enough to know that in attempting to 
practise it on a clever woman, he would be beaten the 
moment he showed his hand. 

Along with the documents went urgent entreaties to 
Walpole from the Marquise du Deffand not to enter 
into any controversy with Voltaire about Shakespeare. 
She herseK most cordially approved of the sentiments 
found in the reply the latter had sent. It struck her as 
unanswerable, at least at that time. To Voltaire liim- 
self she ^vrote that his letter to Walpole seemed to her 
a masterpiece of taste, of good sense, of eloquence, of 

275 



SHAKESPEABE AND VOLTAIRE 

politeness, and of various other abstract nouns. " Na- 
tional pride," she added, " is great among the English. 
They are reluctant to accord us superiority in matters 
of taste, while we recognize in them complete superior- 
ity, with the exception of you, in matters of reasoning." ^ 
She had not yet read her Shakespeare ; and with this 
belief of hers she doubtless supposed that any con- 
troversy about him would result in the speedy annihila- 
tion of her English friend. That Voltaire was seeking 
to have one was evident. This letter of his, she wrote to 
Walpole, was merely the first skii-mish to bring about a 
little war between you and him in regard to Shake- 
speare. " In the name of God," she exclaimed, " do not 
fall into this trap. Get out of the affair as politely as 
possible, but avoid war." It was her own advice ; she 
added that it was also the advice of the Duchess of 
Choiseul.2 

Walpole needed no urging to follow this counsel. It 
was in fullest accord with both his own convictions 
and intentions. It had never been his design, he wrote 
to his correspondent, to enter into a controversy. He 
saw and said that Voltaire was only seeking an occasion 
to air his sentiments. That his vanity had been sorely 
wounded by the declaration of the superiority of Shake- 
speare to himself was likewise evident. But Walpole's 
disinclination to continue the discussion was furthermore 
much increased by the disgust he felt at the double- 
dealing which Voltaire's letter to the Duchess of Choiseul 

1 Letter of August' 14, 1768 to Voltaire: in ' Letters of Madame du 
Defifand to Walpole,' vol. iv. p. 99. 

2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 251. Letter of July 2\, 1768. 

276 



THE VOLTAIRE-WALPOLE CORRESPONDENCE 

revealed. He pointed out to the Marquise the kind of 
good faith which had been exhibited in the matter. 
" He seeks me out," he wrote, " he asks of me my 
' Richard,' I send it to him, and then he speaks of it as 
if I had been intriguing to get him to read it." ^ How- 
ever, he assured his anxious friend that he would take 
occasion to soothe Voltaire's wounded feelings in his 
reply, a copy of which he would transmit to her. He 
carried out his promise so effectually that she was 
deceived by it herself, or at least pretended to be 
deceived. " Walpole," she wrote to Voltaire, " is 
thoroughly converted ; his past errors must be par- 
doned." 2 When the originals of this correspondence 
came into Walpole's possession after her death, he 
wrote a comment against this assertion, that it was only 
the friendship of the Marquise for him that had led her 
to make such a statement, which he certainly had 
never authorized. " I had broken off all commerce with 
Voltaire," he added, " being indignant at his falsehoods 
and his petty tricks." Walpole's own self-love had 
been a good deal hurt by the slighting mention of his 
' Richard HI.' made in the letter to the Duchess of 
Choiseul, as well as by the implication conveyed in it 
that he had been plotting to secure from the French 
author a recognition of the work. He never got over 
this feeling. 

But on the present occasion he made no manifestation 
of it. He set out to perform a certain task, and fully 
did he carry through what he had planned. When it 

1 Letters of Madame du Deffand to Walpole, vol. i. p. 252. 

2 Ibid. vol. iv. p. 100. 

277 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

came to exchanging compliments he proved himself no 
unworthy competitor of the most skilled adulator of 
Europe, if indeed it be not conceded that he displayed 
decided superiority. There was assuredly a delicacy, an 
artistic finish in liis falsehoods which his correspondent 
never surpassed. He could not, to be sure, rival 
Frederick the Great in the extent and profusion of 
praise he lavished upon the patriarch of Ferney. He 
was not equal to saying, as did the king, that here was a 
Frenchman who had surpassed Vergil in his own art; 
that in this one man were united the different merits of 
Sophocles, Euripides, Thucydides, and Quintus Curtius. 
But then Frederick was sincere in these wholesale 
laudations, at least at intervals ; whereas Walpole had 
to struggle to express views he did not hold, and to coin 
phrases not one of which he believed. To him, there- 
fore, must be awarded that credit which is bestowed upon 
the artist who triumphs over obstacles apparently insur- 
mountable. He had fulfilled the condition which Vol- 
taire was wont to proclaim as one of the tests of genius, 
that the greater the difficulty, the greater the glory. 

Full of flattering remai'ks as had been his first letter, 
Walpole surpassed it altogether in this reply. He made 
amplest confession of his error. One would wish to be 
in the wrong, he said, in order to have his mistakes 
pointed out in so obliging and masterly a manner. He 
would consider Shakespeare himself to blame, if he had 
seen Voltaire's reply and had then failed to conform to 
the rules laid down in it. " When he lived," he contin- 
ued, " there had not been a Voltaire both to give laws to 
the stage, and to show on what good sense those laws were 

278 



THE VOLTAIRE-WALPOLE CORRESPONDENCE 

founded." He was prouder of receiving rules from him 
than of contesting them. It had been presumptuous on 
his part to dispute with him before making his acquaint- 
ance through this correspondence. Now it would be 
ungrateful, since he had been both noticed and forgiven. 
Voltaire was one of those truly great and rare men who 
know at once how to conquer and to pardon.^ 

Other flattering falsehoods of this sort are scattered 
up and down the pages of this not very long letter. 
Walpole was apparently uncertain which to admire more 
in the man he was addressing, the greatness of his 
genius or the goodness of his heart. One would suppose 
that Voltaire, unless totally incapacitated by vanity, 
should have felt the ring of insincerity in these words, 
even if he did not suspect them of irony. Yet there is 
nothing in his writings to indicate that any impression 
of either sort had been made upon his mind. He was so 
used to receiving as well as dispensing incense, pungent 
and penetrating enough to offend ordinary nostrils, that 
it is possible that what seems to us fumes absolutely 
unendurable may have afforded his organs nothing more 
than an agreeable titillation. Certain it is he henceforth 
always spoke of Walpole with much respect. The latter 
deserved some such recognition for the skill with which 
he effected a retreat from a contest in which success 
would have depended, not on the weight of the argument, 
but upon the prejudices of the reader. Furthermore, he 
had a right to plume himself upon the fact that on 
his correspondent's own field of adulation he had met 

1 Letter of Walpole to Voltaire, July 27, 1768; Cunningham's 'Let- 
ters of Walpole,' vol. v. p. 112. 

279 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

him squarely and had had no reason to feel a sense of 
inferiority. To him in the interchange of complimentary 
mendacities which went on between the two, the pahn 
must in justice be awarded. From another and a 
higher point of view his letter was distinctly discredit- 
able. He was utterly insincere. He not only dis- 
beheved what he had written, but in his secret heart he 
was ashamed of himself for having written it. The 
result followed which might have been expected. With 
all his admiration for his genius, he never thought or 
spoke well of Voltaire again. 



280 



CHAPTER XIV 

TWO NEW ENGLISH AD VEKS ARIES 

Before the correspondence described in the last 
chapter had taken place, a mightier antagonist than Vol- 
taire had ever met loomed up for a moment. Had the 
preliminary skirmishes which occurred developed into a 
regular conflict, there would have been a battle-royal 
which would have been memorable in the history of liter- 
ary controversy. In 1765, Dr. Johnson had brought out 
his edition of Shakespeare. In its celebrated preface he 
had said a good deal to irritate the admirers of his author ; 
but he had said a great deal more to irritate the critics 
who for a century had been trying to measure the 
gigantic proportions of the great Elizabethan by the 
limited tape-lines of their rules. To many of the views 
then generally accepted he had run counter. He had 
treated the unities with disrespect. In his opinion they 
gave more trouble to the poet than pleasure to the 
auditor. He had further defended tragi-comedy. Not 
only had he spoken of the theories he combated as foolish, 
but he had strongly insinuated that those holding them 
were fools. He represented that the course adopted by 
Shakespeare had exposed him to the censures of critics 
who formed their judgments upon narrower principles 
than those which the dramatist himself had adopted. 

281 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

Two of these critics — one a native and one a 
foreigner — he mentioned in the same paragraph ; and 
the Frenchman could hardly have been pleased at finding 
himself associated with the Englishman who was 
selected for animadversion. The latter was Jolin Dennis, 
the then generally depreciated critic of a bygone age. 
He had found fault with Shakespeare because in his 
• Coriolanus,' Menenius, a Roman senator, had been 
converted into a buffoon. This was a view of the 
character which would naturally meet with the approval 
of Voltaire. In a note to his version of ' Julius Caesar ' 
he had himself remarked that Casca had been made a 
sort of buffoon. What Johnson had specially in mind, 
however, was the disgust the French author had expressed 
because the king in ' Hamlet ' had been represented as a 
drunkard. Neither of these hostile criticisms can be 
accepted as merited, because neither of them had any 
justification in fact. It requires a thorough-going belief 
not so much in the dignity of tragedy as in its pomposity, 
to consider Menenius a buffoon. That he is very far 
from being, though he has the wit to clothe his wisdom 
in humorous language. Claudius too is represented in 
' Hamlet ' as being fond of drinking ; but nowhere does 
he appear in a state of intoxication. Johnson accepted, 
however, both these characterizations as correct. He 
defended the propriety of them in the places where they 
appeared. Shakespeare he said, wanted a buffoon, and 
wanting one, he went into the senate-house for that 
which the senate-house would certainly have afforded 
him. He wanted to make the Danish ruler not only 
odious but despicable. Therefore he added to his other 

282 



TWO NEW ENGLISH ADVERSARIES 

vices that of drunkenness, to which kings are subject as 
well as other men. Shakespeare had made nature pre- 
dominant over accident. Preserving the essential 
character he had not paid much heed to distinctions 
which were superinduced or adventitious. After pointing 
out in this way the futility of the criticisms which he 
Ihad been combating, he summed up his opinion of them 
and of those who had uttered them in the following 
words : " These," he wrote, " are the petty cavils of 
petty minds." 

The cavils might be petty ; but the mind of the man 
who had given them utterance was not petty, and John- 
son knew it. The hostility which Voltaire's criticism of 
Shakespeare had evoked in England often took now, as 
in this case, the form of unwarrantable personal depre- 
ciation. There were several other passages in this noted 
preface in which his views were attacked and he himself 
slightingly mentioned. In his disdainful rejection of the 
obligation of the unities Johnson had observed that the 
violations of these rules were becoming to the compre- 
hensive genius of Shakespeare, while the censures passed 
upon him for disregarding them were suitable to the 
minute and slender criticisms of Voltaire. The French 
author was unquestionably stung by the somewhat con- 
temptuous tone that was employed. He had indeed a 
right to resent it. Whether his views were correct or 
absurd, — and very absurd at this day they seem to most 
— the epithet of " petty " applied to a man of his intel- 
lectual powers and rank was indefensible. He noticed 
the attack in one of the essays now found in his ' Philo- 
sophical Dictionary.' It is the one which treats of 

283 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

' Dramatic Art.' In it he repeated all his old criticisms 
of the English theatre. He spoke of it as full of life 
and passion, but uniting in the same piece buffoonery 
and horror. The unities of time and place are grossly- 
violated. The vilest of the rabble appear on the stage 
along with the greatest princes ; and the princes often 
use the language of the rabble. 

But he had also something to say of the attack upon 
himself in this preface of which mention has just been 
made. "I have cast my eyes," he remarked, " over an 
edition of Shakespeare put forth by Mr. Samuel Jonh- 
son." He was true to the habit early acquired and 
steadily maintained. With the very volume before him 
he could not succeed in spelling properly the name of the 
author whose views he was combating. " I have seen," 
he continued, " that in it those foreigners are treated as 
possessing petty minds who are astonished to find in the 
pieces of this great Shakespeare a Roman senator playing 
the buffoon, and a king appearing on the stage intoxi- 
cated. I do not wish to suspect Mr. Jonhson of being a 
sorry jester and to be too fond of wine : but I find it a 
little extraordinary that he counts buffoonery and drunk- 
enness among the beauties of the tragic theatre." This 
is language far more courteous than that of his antago- 
nist ; but as an argument it cannot be said to be par- 
ticularly conclusive. The real point in dispute had 
been evaded. 

In truth any prepossession in favor of Voltaire due to 
the greater politeness of the language he employed is 
rudely shaken by finding him once more resorting in this 
article to his old and disreputable trick of selecting, as 

284 



TWO NEW ENGLISH ADVERSARIES 

peculiarly representative of Shakespeare, passages which 
he believed would be specially offensive to his own 
countrymen either on the score of delicacy or of dra- 
matic art. He quoted the line of Vergil which repre- 
sented the Britons as utterly separated from the rest of the 
world. The implication was that it was as true of their 
taste as of their geographical position. For confirmation 
he referred his readers to that exact translation of the 
first three acts of ' Julius Ccesar,' the exactness of w^hich 
we have learned to know too well. He quoted again the 
coarse sentence in the speech of lago in the opening 
scene of 'Othello,' which twice before had been made to 
do duty. " It is this," he said, commenting upon it, 
" which they speak on the tragic stage of London." He 
gave some further illustrations of what he held forth as 
distinguishing characteristics of English dramatic art. 
He translated the short conversation of Cleopatra with 
the peasant who brings her the asp,^ and a part of that 
which went on between Henry V. and the Princess Kath- 
arine.^ To have a king's daughter wooed by a king in 
the way here represented was to him very strange ; so 
in rendering it, he contrived to make it stranger by some 
extraordinary blunders.^ Furthermore, he called atten- 

1 Antony and Cleopatra, act v., scene 2. 

2 Henr}' V., act v., scene 2. 

'^ It is not always easy to decide whetlier Voltaire's mistranslations are 
due to ignorance or to intention. There are some of slight importance in 
the two short passages here rendered ; hut in the interview between the 
king and the Princess Katharine there are two most extraordinary per- 
versions of the sense. In one of the speeches of the monarch to the prin- 
cess he tells her that he is glad she cannot understand English, for if she 
could, " thou wouldst find me such a plain king that thou wouldst think 
I had sold my farm to buy my crown." Voltaire translated "farm" by 

285 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

tion to the scene in this same play in which the princess 
is represented as trying to learn English from her maid- 
of-honor. He could not mar it by translation, for it was 
almost entirely in French. Still, for the benefit of his 
countrymen he was careful to select from it a peculiarly 
obscene allusion which, as being in a foreign tongue, the 
ordinary Englishman would never have understood. He 
dwelt upon it with unmistakable pleasure. " All this," 
he added, "has been played for a long time upon the 
London stage in the presence of the court." This state- 
ment was a fabrication of his own. He himself had 
never seen ' Henry V.' played, nor at that period indeed 
had many Englishmen. It had been revived for the first 
time since the Restoration several years after Voltaire 
had left England. In addition, this last scene, upon 
which he commented — utterly unnecessary to the con- 
duct of the piece — had very certainly never been played 
since the Elizabethan age. 

It must not be inferred that the essay on ' Dramatic 
Art' consisted entirely of attack. Voltaire was alto- 
gether too crafty to resort to a method of criticism whieh 
would have detracted from that attitude of impartiality 
which he affected to maintain. He devoted a few para- 
graphs to saying something in the way of approval. Yet 
if his method of censure was objectionable, his praise 
was much more so. Never in his later years did Voltaire 
display his venom towards Shakespeare more manifestly 

femme. The king is further represented as saying that he knew no ways 
"to mince it in love," — that is, to speak primly and affectedly. Vol- 
taire must have supposed that the king had in view some culinary opera- 
tion, for he rendered " mince" by harher menu. 

286 



TWO NEW ENGLISH ADVERSARIES 

thaD when he pretended to appear in the role of his 
advocate. Even when his observations are apparently 
trutliful, they exhibit that unveracious veracity which 
produces the effect of a lie. In this particular instance 
he magnanimously set out to defend him against a 
hostile opinion which either had no existence at all, or 
owed to his own efforts whatever existence it had. 
" The Italians, the French," he wrote, " the men of let- 
ters of every country who have not dwelt some time in 
England, take him only for a Gille of the fair, for a 
farceur very much below Harlequin, for the most con- 
temptible buffoon who has ever amused the populace." 
With a fine sense of fair play he assured his readers that 
this opinion was a mistake. In spite of the extraordi- 
nary stuff with which he had just been regaling them, 
Shakespeare was really a genius. To demonstrate it, he 
quoted three short passages from ' Julius Caesar,' or as he 
called it, ' The Death of Csesar.' Nor would he omit, 
he said, the beautiful monologue of Hamlet which was 
in everybody's mouth. So once more appeared that ex- 
traordinary version of it which had been first published 
in the ' Philosophical Letters.' Now it was no longer 
spoken of as having been translated. It had been imitated 
in French, Voltaire asserted, with that circumspection 
which is demanded by the language of a people scrupu- 
lous to excess in matters of decorum. The necessary 
inference was that an exact rendering- of it would have 
offended their susceptibilities. To all this followed what 
he regarded as a concession to English prejudices which 
justified him in entertaining the highest admiration for 
his own fairness and candor. Shakespeare would have 

287 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

been a perfect poet, had he only lived in the time of 
Addison. 

Boswell tells us that he urged Johnson to reply to 
this attack. Voltaire, he justly thought, was an an- 
tagonist with whom he should not disdain to contend. 
Johnson said that he perhaps might ; but he never 
did. His constitutional indolence was pretty certain to 
prevail over any inclination he may have felt. Besides, 
he could not fail to see, as did Walpole, that his views 
would hardly influence any but his own countrymen ; 
and every day they stood less and less in need of being 
convinced of their truthfulness. In France the only 
ones who could successfully combat Voltaire on the mat- 
ters in dispute were Frenchmen themselves ; and they 
had already done this sufficiently to give him percep- 
tible uneasiness. But the task which Johnson refused 
was taken up by another ; taken up perhaps before he 
had refused it. In the latter part of April, 1769, appeared 
anonymously a work entitled ' An Essay on the Writings 
and Genius of Shakespeare, compared with the Greek 
and French dramatic poets, with some remarks upon the 
misrepresentations of Mons. de Voltaire.' 

The writer of this work was the noted head of the 
blue-stocking world, Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu. In under- 
taking it she was animated by no special hostility to 
Voltaire personally. She had indeed for him that reluc- 
tant admiration which religious souls of a highly intel- 
lectual cast could not then keep from exhibiting for the 
most brilliant man of letters of his time. She enter- 
tained the regulation horror of his impiety, but she was 
also impressed by his wit, even when it was most 

288 



TWO NEW ENGLISH ADVERSARIES 

wicked, as in Candide ; and in her secret heart it would 
perhaps have been difficult for her to tell which of the 
two qualities attracted her the most. But like the rest 
of the English mce she was more irritated by his attacks 
on the greatness of Shakespeare than she was by those 
on the credibility of the Bible. This found at times 
peculiarly energetic expression. In 1755 Voltaire's 
Orphelin de la Chine had been published. She wrote to 
her sister that she had read it without caring for it. 
" When I compare this indifference," she said, " with the 
interest, the admiration, the surprise with which I read 
what the saucy Frenchman calls les farces monstreuses of 
Shakespeare, I could burn him and his tragedy. . . . 
Oh ! that we were as sure our fleets and armies could 
drive the French out of America as that our poets and 
tragedians can drive them out of Parnassus. I hate to 
see these tame creatures, taught to pace by art, attack 
fancy's sweetest child." ^ 

Mrs. Montagu unquestionably thought that she ad- 
mired Shakespeare. She did so after a fashion ; but it 
was the inept fashion of the earlier half of the eigh- 
teenth century, which her advancing and more advanced 
contemporaries were outgrowing. " Had Shakespeare 
lived in Sophocles' age and country," she wrote in 1760, 
" what a writer had he been ! what powers had he by 
nature, and alas ! what deficiencies in art ! " ^ It was 
with a faith of this sort that she set out to champion 
the cause of fancy's sweetest child, and incidentally dis- 
lodge his French rivals from their habitations on Par- 

1 Letters of Mrs. Montagu, vol. iv. p. 7 ; letter of Nov. 18, 1755. 

2 Ibid. vol. iv. p. 301 ; letter of Sept. 10. 
19 289 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

nassus. There was nothing in the contents of the book 
she published to indicate that it was the work of a 
woman. Indeed there was a good deal to give the 
impression that its author was a man. But the secret 
was not long kept. Manifestly indeed to a pretty large 
circle it was only officially a secret. In December 
Mrs. Montagu wrote to a friend in her large style that 
the authorship having been whispered about, the news 
had circulated with incredible swiftness. If there had 
been any doubt about the success of the work, this dis- 
closure would have removed it at once. The first edition 
of one thousand copies was soon after exhausted. As 
such books go, this must be deemed a large sale. A 
second edition appeared in May, 1770, another in 1772, 
and a fourth in 1776. Others followed later. It was 
reprinted in Dublin, then the chosen home of the book 
pirate. As early as 1771 it was translated into German 
by Eschenburg, who a few years later was to bring out 
a complete version of Shakespeare's plays. The number 
of editions, and the way the work was spoken of by men 
of great and of little ability, furnish an interesting illus- 
tration of how much social position and reputation can 
do to advance the fortunes of a book — especially when 
a general but superficial acquaintance exists with the 
subject, coupled with an ignorance of it really profound. 
How little value such a work may have in itself, it has 
exceeding value in the history of criticism. 

In the periodical press of the time the ' Essay ' was 
spoken of in all cases favorably, and in some cases with 
unbounded applause. Indeed it is hard, or rather im- 
possible, to believe that the secret of its authorship had 

290 



TWO NEW ENGLISH ADVERSARIES 

been kept from the writers in these publications ; for in 
certain instances they reviewed it with an enthusiasm 
of praise which had never been bestowed by them upon 
the dramatist whose cause it professed to champion. 
Its author was described as the only essayist, almost the 
only critic, who had yet appeared worthy of Shake- 
speare. If the partisans of Voltaire, said one of them, 
" have one grain of modesty or candor, the controversy, 
if so unequal a conflict can be so called, is now at an 
end." ^ " The age," said the writer further, " has 
scarcely produced a more fair, judicious, and classical 
performance of its kind than this essay." Part of the 
favor with which the book was received was due to its 
flattery of English self-love. It had charged presump- 
tion upon the man who had ventured to impute bar- 
barism and ignorance to a country which understood 
Sophocles and Euripides as well as any in Europe. 
This statement was about the only one to which the critic 
just cited took exception. The author should have said 
it was a country that understood these tragic writers, 
not as well as, but better than any other. 

But it must not be imagined that it was merely 
anonjinous or long-forgotten writers in long-forgotten 
reviews who indulged in this enthusiastic language. 
From all quarters, both at the time and afterward, came 
praise. An early admirer was George Grenville, a man 
of special interest to Americans as the originator of 
the Stamp Act. Within less than a month after the 
publication of the work he wrote to Lord Lyttelton 
from his home at Wotton that they were reading the 

1 Critical Review, May, 1769, vol. xxvii. pp. 350 £f. 
291 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

' Essay ' over and over by their fireside, in order to form 
the taste of their young- people. ^ We know that Sir 
Joshua Reynolds had the highest opinion of the treatise. 
Warton, in his ' History of English Poetry,'spoke of it as 
" the most elegant and judicious piece of criticism which 
the present age has produced." ^ By Harris, in his 
account of modern critics contained in his ' Philological 
Enquiries,' the authoress is designated as " the ornament 
of her sex, the critic and patroness of our illustrious 
Shakespeare." ^ Potter, in his translation of JEschylus, 
paid profuse compliments to several living writers, but 
to none more than " the elegant female author of the 
' Essay on the Genius and Writings of Shakespeare.' " 
Davies, in liis ' Life of Garrick,' thought that the 
various powers of the great dramatist had been as 
faithfully, warmly, and even critically described by that 
actor in his jubilee-ode as had been done, he was almost 
inclined to say, " by the excellent pen of the learned 
and judicious Mrs. Montagu." ^ The force of panegyric, 
it was felt, could no further go. A few years later he 
returned to the subject in his ' Dramatic Miscellanies ' 
in the course of some comments he was making upon 
Voltaire's mistakes in his account of ' Hamlet.' " Mrs. 
Montagu," he there wrote, "has by an incomparable 
defence of our author, defeated the weak attempts of 
this envious but brilliant Frenchman to blast the laurels 
of our great j)oet." ^ 

Equal enthusiasm was felt and expressed for the 

1 Grenville Correspondence, vol. iv. p. 424. 

2 Note in vol. i. (1774), Dissertation i, end of g 2. 

8 Book i. chap. 4. ■* Vol. ii. p. 225 (ed. of 1808). 

6 Vol. iii. p. 103 (1784-85). 

292 



TWO NEW ENGLISH ADVERSARIES 

' Essay ' by members of her own sex. All petty female 
jealousy fled abashed before this wonderful display of 
critical sagacity. The tuneful virgins of the time had 
long been in the habit of celebrating the writer as the 
ornament of the social and literary world. They came 
forward now to chant her praises again. The spirit 
which animated them all can be seen, for example, in 
Hannah More, who had not yet assumed her brevet 
title of Mrs. In the epilogue to her pastoral drama of 
' The Search for Happiness ' ^ she commemorated her 
sitjter-authoress in these words : 

" When all-accomplished Montagu can spread 
Fresh-gathered laurels round her Shakespeare's head." 

Tributes like this could be multiplied almost endlessly. 
As an illustration of a ver}' general feeling, take the 
way the work was referred to b}^ one of Garrick's 
female correspondents in a letter written to him from 
Dijon. She gave expression in it to a very genuine 
admiration for Voltaire. But one reason of her fondness 
for him would have been little to his satisfaction, had 
he known of it. "I own," she wrote, " I think we are 
all under a peculiar obligation to him, for had he not 
gone beyond his depth, and injudiciously criticised 
our immortal Shakespeare, our language would never 
have been enriched by its masterpiece. I mean Mrs. 
Montagu's ' Essay,' which does honor to our country 
and much more to our sex."^ 

All this is somewhat trying to the modern man who 

1 Published in July, 1773. 

2 Letter of Mre. Pye, dated May 16, 1774, 'Garrick Currespondeuce,' 
vol. i. p. 628. 

293 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

desires to believe that any criticism is worth anything. 
Yet there is a worst beliind. Extravagant as is the 
laudation which has already been recounted, it was 
surpassed by the words of one much greater as a man 
of letters than any of those so far mentioned. Cowper 
had not yet sunk into insanity ; but he certainly gave 
alarming indication of the aberration of judgment ac- 
companying it in a letter he wrote to Lady Hesketh in 
1788. "I no longer wonder," he said, "that Mrs. 
Montagu stands at the head of all that is learned, and 
that every critic veils his bonnet to her superior judg- 
ment. I am now reading and have reached the middle 
of her ' Essay on the Genius of Shakespeare,' a book 
of which, strange as it may seem, though I must have 
read formerly, I had absolutely forgot the existence." 
This loss of memory will not seem so strange to us as it 
did to Cowper. The work is one which, unless cir- 
cumstances call attention to it, is of a kind very easy to 
forget. But it did not so strike the poet. " The learn- 
ing," he continued, " the good sense, the sound judg- 
ment, and the wit displayed in it justify not only my 
compliment, but all compliments that have either already 
been paid to her talents, or shall be paid hereafter. 
Voltaire, I doubt not, rejoiced that his antagonist wrote 
in English, and that his countrymen could not possibly 
be judges of the dispute. Could they have known how 
much she was in the right, and by how many thousand 
miles the bard of Avon is superior to all their drama- 
tists, the French critic would have lost half his fame 
among them." It was somewhat unfortunate, in view 
of this last remark, that Mrs. Montagu's work had been 

294 



TWO NEW ENGLISH ADVERSARIES 

translated while Voltaire was still living, and the faith 
of his admirers had not been perceptibly shaken in 
consequence. 

Of all the prominent men of letters of the time Di-. 
Johnson was perhaps the only one who avowed dissent 
from the high estimate taken of the work. His un- 
favorable opinion was genuine, because it was given 
before he knew who was its author ; it was unprejudiced 
because in it he himself had been complimented. He 
expressed surprise to Boswell that Reynolds should be 
fond of the book. " Neither I, nor Beauclerk, nor Mrs. 
Thrale could get through it," he added. When this 
disparaging remark was published in the ' Journal of a 
Tour to the Hebrides,' Mrs. Thrale, now become Mrs. 
Piozzi, tried to wriggle out of having shared in this feel- 
ing. It was in vain. Boswell, who was possessed by 
the devil of accuracy, shut off every loophole of escape.^ 
The biographer further reports that Johnson growled 
out the following amiable criticism in reply to a remark 
of Reynolds that the ' Essay ' did Mrs. Montagu honor. 
" Yes, sir," he said ; " it does her honor, but it would do 
nobody else honor." He then went on to declare that 
there was not one sentence of true criticism in the book. 
These were unquestionably liis honest sentiments. Yet 
in the additions which he made to his life of Young he 
expressed himself as being indebted for some of them to 
" Mrs. Montagu, the famous champion of Shakespeare." 
In truth her name came so generally to be associated 
with that of the great dramatist that the mention of 

1 See in ' Gentleman's Magazine ' for 1786, vol. xlvi. p. 285, Boswell's 
letter of April 17. 

2U5 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

the one was apt to bring up the mention of the other. 
Walpole admired her none too much ; yet in his letters 
she was dubbed half-humorously, half-contemptuously, 
Mrs. Montagu of Shakespearshire. 

Modern criticism is very far from sharing in the en- 
thusiasm which this work created on its first appear- 
ance. It is never celebrated now in the exaggerated 
style once regularly employed. It is moderate approval 
only which is given it in these days, even by those who 
preserve themselves from any prejudice against it by re- 
fraining from its perusal. In fact, so far from being 
spoken of with praise, it is much oftener mentioned 
with contempt. It must be said that there is a great 
deal more to justify the later opinion than the earlier. 
To the reader of it at the present day — he is a some- 
what solitary character — it is in many respects one of 
the most exasperating of books. Mrs. Montagu was as 
little fitted by her knowledge to defend Shakespeare as 
Voltaire was by his to attack him. As much as he, she 
was under the sway of the pedantic rules and prejudices 
she affected to despise and occasionally pretended to 
condemn. All the ignorance about the subject she 
treated, which had been accumulated and handed down 
by successive generations of critics, was faithfully re- 
produced in her pages. In them appeared in its most 
offensive form that apologetic tone of the eighteenth 
century which represented iShakespeare as abounding in 
faults due to his poverty, to the low condition of the 
stage, and the necessity he lay under of consulting the 
barbarous taste of the time in which he flourished. She 
had been saved as by fire from censuring him for his 

296 



TWO NEW ENGLISH ADVERSARIES 

neglect of the unities ; for she conceded that Dr. John- 
son in his ingenious preface had greatly obviated all that 
could be objected to him on that score. 

But in other respects she was faithful to the criticism 
of the past, puerile where it was not ignorant. She 
spoke of Shakespeare as rude and illiterate.^ She con- 
ceded the nonsense, the indecorums, the irregularities of 
his plays. He had not been tutored by any rules of art 
or informed by acquaintance with just and regular 
dramas.2 He was in truth so little under the discipline 
of art that we are apt to ascribe his happiest successes as 
well as his most unfortunate failings to chance.^ These 
are some of her general criticisms; her specific ones 
display the same marvellous insight. By following mi- 
nutely the chronicles of the time he had embarrassed his 
drama with too great a number of persons and events.* 
She found the speech of Brutus to the people, in ' Julius 
Caesar,' quaint and affected.^ She exhibited her utter 
incapacity to comprehend the rhetorical skill of Antony 
by declaring that the repetition of the epithet " honor- 
able " in his speech was perhaps too frequent.^ The 
character of Pistol in the second part of Henry IV. was 
too much for her to understand.^ Following previous 
critics she found many bombast speeches in the tragedy 
of ' Macbeth.' ^ Like her predecessors she unfortunately 
forgot to particularize them ; lapse of time has now 
made it difficult to discover them. 

So much for her critical acumen. In the communi- 

1 Essay, etc. (1769) p. 115. 2 jbid. p. 71. 3 Ibid. p. 100. 

* Ibid. p. 71. 5 Ibid. p. 273. « Ihid. p. 122. 

7 Ibid. p. 186. 

297 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

cation of erroneous information this defender of Shake- 
speare proved herself no unworthy rival of his assailant. 
We are told that the age in which he lived was rude and 
void of taste ; ^ that he wrote at a time when learning 
was tinctured with pedantry, when wit was unpolished 
and mirth was ill-bred ; ^ that in the court of Elizabeth 
a scientific jargon was spoken ; that a certain obscurity 
of style was universally affected ; ^ that all the writers 
of the time were disposed to indulge, not merely in ob- 
scurity, but in obscure bombast.* The scientific jargon 
here mentioned seems to have been the particular dis- 
covery of Mrs. Montagu herself. In another place she 
tells us that it not only pervaded the court, but the uni- 
versities % that statesmen and scholars employed it, and 
necessarily this had a pernicious influence upon Shake- 
speare's style.^ What makes this pernicious influence 
hard to comprehend is the further information vouch- 
safed that the theatre was not then frequented by per- 
sons of rank. The plays Shakespeare wrote were acted, 
we are informed, in paltry taverns, to unlettered audi- 
ences just emerging from barbarity.^ 

This Elizabethan audience, to whose wretched taste 
Shakespeare too often catered, met with but little mercy 
at Mrs. Montagu's hands. In one place it was described 
as rude and illiterate,^ in another as fierce and barbarous.^ 
It was its members who preferred to speeches the hurly- 
burly of action, it was they who were most pleased when 
the playwright, to use her ornate language, " raised the 

1 Essay, p. 285. 2 i\^\^ p. jq. ?■ Ibid. p. 10. 

< Ibid. p. 186. 6 Ibid. p. 28.5. c ibid. p. 71 

' Ibid. p. 71. » rbid. p. 150. 

298 



TWO NEW ENGLISH ADVERSARIES 

bloody ghost and reared the warlike standard." It was 
they who delighted in sanguinary skirmishes upon the 
stage, which she could wish had always been hissed.^ 
Correct taste too was naturally offended by the transi- 
tion from grave and important to light and ludicrous 
subjects, and still more with that from great and illus- 
trious to low and mean persons.^ For all these offences 
against art, that dreadful audience was responsible. It 
compelled the author to consult their barbarous prefer- 
ences and tastes. One naturally wonders who it could 
have been that was responsible for the production of 
those magnificent passages of which she in other parts 
of her ' Essay ' boasted. 

Mrs. Montagu's general conclusion about Shakespeare 
was that " he wrote to please an untaught people, guided 
wholly by their feelings, and to those feelings he applied, 
and they are often touched by circumstances that have 
not dignity and splendor enough to please the eye accus- 
tomed to the specious miracles of ostentatious art and 
the nice selections of refined judgment." ^ In the words 
just quoted we have the summary of her opinions con- 
veyed in elegant language befitting their value. Her book 
abounded in the finest of fine writing. It was pervaded 
throughout by a faint reflection of Johnson's orotund 
phrase, but unfortunately without Johnson's weight of 
thought. In this grandiloquent style was also conveyed 
an easy erudition which ranged at will over the literatures 
of all ages and climes. There was no subject about which 
she did not have definite views ; none which she considered 
herself incompetent to discuss. She could not read the 

1 Espa)', pp. 74-7r). [ 2 ibul. p. 101. ^ jbid. p. 276. 

299 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

Greek tragedians in the original ; she could not have 
spoken more confidently about them had she known 
them by heart. In certain particulars Voltaire and she 
were well mated. Vast as was the disproportion between 
their intellects, there was one common ground upon 
which they met. Neither ever shrank from cultivating 
the fertile fields of human gullibility by the exhibition 
of any hesitancy in pretending to a knowledge they did 
not possess. 



300 



CHAPTER XV 

ATTACK AND DEFENCE IN ENGLAND 

The statements cited in the last chapter from Mrs. 
Montagu's ' Essay ' are sufficient to show the modern 
reader that she had ignorantly sacrificed the cause slie had 
professed to advocate. She liad vehemently proclaimed 
Shakespeare's superiority; she had conceded nearly 
everything which had been brought forward to establish 
his inferiority. How came it, then, that this utterly in- 
adequate work met with so enthusiastic a welcome ? 
How came it that she, with knowledge and powers hardly 
more respectable than those of a highly intelligent school- 
girl, should have been celebrated almost everywhere as a 
great critic ? Of the fact itself as regards both particu- 
lars, there can be no question. Feeble and pretentious 
as was the ' Essay,' it was hailed on nearly all sides as a 
triumphant vindication of the dramatist. Obviously 
such success could not be entirely due to the social posi- 
tion of the authoress, powerful as that factor was in 
securing it. There must have been other agencies at 
work. It becomes accordingly of some interest in the 
history of Shakespearean criticism to trace what were the 
causes, outside of this specific one, which contributed to 
bring about a result which strikes us now as so exceed- 
ingly singular. 

301 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

One reason lies upon the surface. Mrs. Montagu had 
neither the knowledge nor the judgment to see not 
merely how inadequate, but actually prejudicial to her 
own side was the defence she had set up. But fortu- 
nately for her, the age was generally in the same situa- 
tion as herself. There had been a great advance during 
the century in the rectification of the text of Shake- 
speare, and in the explanation of obscure words and 
phrases. There had been an even greater advance in the 
appreciation, or rather in the extension of the apprecia- 
tion of his powers. But there had been but little cor- 
responding advance in the scientific criticism of the skill 
he had shown in his vocation. The success of Mrs. 
Montagu's work was due largely at the time to the very 
things which we now regard as its defects. It was 
assisted by the general ignorance, which then prevailed, 
of Shakespeare not as a poet, but as a dramatic artist. 
Johnson's powerful voice was making itself heard in com- 
bating some of these delusions ; but it had by no means 
overcome them. Lessing's far more triumphant vindica- 
tion of the practices of the poet had only just appeared 
in Germany and was scarcely known at all in Great 
Britain. Consequently the views to which Mrs. Mon- 
tagu gave expression were largely in harmony with those 
generally held in theory. They had come down from 
the past with little contradiction ; they had apparently 
been strengthened, even in England, by the powerful in- 
fluence of Voltaire ; and though they were about to give 
up the ghost, they never seemed destined to a longer life 
than just before they died. As a result, her concession 
of the deficiencies of her author was simply regarded as 

302 



ATTACK AND DEFENCE IN ENGLAND 

an evidence of her candor and impartiality. It is these 
characteristics which to a certain extent kept alive her 
work later on the Continent, long after it had been nearly 
forgotten in the country of its birth. As late as 1828 it 
was translated into Italian, and at that time and later it 
was spoken of favorably by Continental critics. 

In one way in particular it appealed directly to the 
age in which it was published. One of the articles of 
faith to which the eighteenth century clung was its su- 
periority to the age of Elizabeth. Its learning was incal- 
culably greater, its language was more polished, its taste 
was more refined. It strikes the modern reader with 
constant amusement to find pigmy playwrights who then 
wrote for the theatre, and critics who discussed what 
these wrote, designating the latter part of the sixteenth 
century as rude and barbarous, and talking patronizingly 
of their superiority to a generation which had produced 
Raleigh and Sidney and Spenser and Bacon ; and con- 
trasting to their advantage the art displayed in their own 
productions with that exhibited in those of that body of 
dramatists, with Shakespeare at their head, whom Dry- 
den, looking across the chasm of the civil war, had styled 
the giant-race before the flood. Yet the belief existed 
then in full force. There was not the slightest suspi- 
cion that the whole question of the unities had been 
threshed out in the Elizabethan age as completely as in 
the Georgian. There were then some few who knew it 
or suspected it ; the vast majority were as ignorant of 
the fact as was Voltaire himself or any Frenchman of the 
time. All Mrs. Montagu's absurd utterances about the 
early stage, and the character of the early audiences, were 

303 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

consequently accepted as exact statements of fact. The 
terrible state of things tlien existing was additional evi- 
dence of the greatness of Shakespeare. He had tri- 
umphed without art ; it was because he was superior to 
art. He produced effects which the most rigid observ- 
ance of the rules could not approach even remotely. 
This led no one, as might have been supposed, to the 
natural inference that there must be something wrong 
with the rules. On the contrary, with the abstract 
correctness of these, few as yet ventured to find fault. 
The contention was that by the special privilege of 
genius Shakespeare had been exempted from their 
operation. 

There were still other causes that contributed to the 
success of the work. Among these must be reckoned 
the personal hostility which Voltaire's attacks upon 
Shakespeare had aroused in England, and the consequent 
disposition to approve anything which controverted his 
opinions or affected to treat them with disrespect. One 
fact there is which is suggestive as to the attitude of the 
English at this time. For several years after Voltaire's 
return from exile his plays had been invariably adapted 
for the London stage very shortly after they had been pro- 
duced upon that of Paris. Brutus, Zaire, Alzire, Mahomet 
had followed one another in succession. Of Zaire there 
had been two different translations, though only one had 
been acted. Even La Mart de Cesar had been used as the 
foundation of a tragedy, whose fortunes were no better 
than those of its original. In truth English playwrights 
were disposed at that time to lay hands upon anything 
and everything Voltaire wi'ote for the theatre, without 

304 



ATTACK AND DEFENCE IN ENGLAND 

regard to the way it was received in the land of its birth. 
The first turn of the tide came with the publication in 
1744 of the preface to Merope. The great success of 
that play upon the French stage did not lead to any 
speedy reproduction of it upon the English. It was 
brought out several years after its appearance in France ; 
it was printed, as we have seen, with a preface containing 
an attack upon its author. After Merope Voltaire com- 
posed during the rest of his life about thirty dramatic 
pieces of all kinds. More than half of these were trage- 
dies. But of these thirty only a beggarly number were 
adapted for the London stage, and usually long after 
they had been published or produced in France. 

The sudden cessation of interest in Voltaire is sugges- 
tive. The following list of his pieces fitted for repre- 
sentation in England, with the date of their appearance, 
will show the change of attitude which had been assumed 
by the men of that country. The Orphelin de la Chine 
of 1755 was adapted by Murphy and brought out in 1759. 
The comedy of L' JEcossaise^ belonging to 1760, was 
translated by Colman, and in 1767 appeared on the Lon- 
don boards under the title of ' The Enghsh Merchant.' 
The TancrMe of 1760 formed the model of the ' Almida ' 
of Madame Celesia, the daughter of Mallet. It was 
brought out in 1771 by Garrick rather as a return for 
favors done him while abroad than for any interest he 
had in tlie piece itself. In the same year also Les Scythes 
of 1767 was reproduced as * Zobeide.' The adaptation 
was the work of Joseph Cradock. In 1776 the Semiraviis 
of 1748 was translated by Ayscough and brought out at 
Drury Lane. To this summary may be added that the 
20 305 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

version of Oreste which Dr. Francklin had made in his 
translation of Voltaire's writings was in 1768 selected by 
Mrs. Yates for her benefit at Covent Garden, and later, 
in 1774, was played by her at Drury Lane. Further, 
Murphy brought out in 1764 a prose piece entitled ' No 
One's Enemy but his Own,' which was taken from the 
little comedy in verse, called L'Indiscret, written in 1724. 
With the exception of ' The English Merchant,' none of 
these pieces had much success, none outlived their first 
season. Two of them at least were distinct failures. 

It was the state of feeling thus indicated which con- 
tributed no small share in inducing England to welcome 
Mrs. Montagu's book with acclamation. Even more 
perhaps did the counter-attack contained in it add to its 
popularity. Much of it was taken up mth criticising 
French plays for their intolerable tediousness, languor, 
and lack of truthfulness of characterization. Their 
beauties were trivial, their faults were essential. She 
pointed out the defects of Corneille and Racine and in- 
sisted as a mere matter of course upon the inferiority of 
both to Shakespeare. Comparisons of this sort between 
the great writers of different nationalities constitute the 
most unprofitable branch of criticism. They are rarely 
anything else than the expression of personal tastes and 
prejudices, usually combined with ignorance of one of 
the authors contrasted, and sometimes with ignorance of 
both. They of course never convince one's opponents ; 
in truth they rarely convince any one worth convincing. 
The best they can do is to irritate. But they always 
appeal to national prepossessions, and on this account 
are sure to meet with a certain degree of favor. The 

306 



ATTACK AND DEFENCE IN ENGLAND 

only excuse that can be pleaded for Mrs. Montagu's at- 
tack upon the French tragedians is that the example had 
been set Jier by Voltaire. Unfortunately, she imitated him 
also in practices least worthy of imitation. Though one 
of her chapters was devoted to Cintia, several of her ani- 
madversions were directed against pieces of Corneille 
which his commentator himself had thought so poorly of 
that he had refused to make them the subject of 
annotation. Her conduct was almost as bad as that of 
Abb^ Le Blanc, who, in order to give his countrymen a 
conception of the taste of the English for scenes of 
violence in theatrical representation and incidentally to 
reveal to them the character of Shakespeare's plays, had 
devoted a long letter to a detailed account of the plot 
of ' Titus Andronicus.' ^ 

The injustice of such criticism always destroys its 
force with men not carried away by prejudice ; for the 
greatness of a writer is not to be measured by his 
poorest work, but b}^ his best. Far more effective, 
therefore, was Mrs. jMontagu's direct attack upon her 
opponent. She pleased herself and pleased her readers 
by exposing mistakes which Voltaire had made in his 
version of ' Julius CcEsar.' She applied to him the 
remark of Pope about the interpreters of Homer who 
first misunderstand their author, and then triumph in 
the awkwardness of their own translation. The censure 
was well deserved. In this most faithful of versions it 
was easy for her to point out error after error. She 
condoled with Voltaire upon these mistakes. Why had 

1 Lettres de Monsieur I'Ahb^ Le Blanc, tome iii. pp. 91-103 (ed. of 
1751). 

307 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

he not secured a better English dictionary ? she asked ; 
for it was clear that it was on the dictionary that he 
relied, and not upon his own knowledge. Why had not 
some friend prevented him from falling into these 
blunders ? Many of his countrymen understood English 
very well, and could easily have explained to him the 
meaning of words and phrases he misunderstood and 
misconstrued. The observations she made upon this 
point are almost all unanswerable, though in one 
instance she herself misinterpreted the passage she set 
out to correct. But none of her critics, French or 
English, knew enough to detect it. The remarks upon 
Voltaire's errors of translation are the only portions of 
her book now worth reading. Still, it is just to admit 
that there are also in it some observations Avhich can be 
seen to be sensible, as soon as they are unrolled from 
the swathing of fine language in which they are envel- 
oped. It is also fair to observe that, while Mrs. Mon- 
tagu made many comments upon Shakespeare of the 
same character as Voltaire himself, she did not lay upon 
them the stress he had done. Nor were they made 
prominent, as they have been in the pages of the pre- 
ceding chapter, by being brought together. On the 
contrary, these absurd criticisms were scattered through 
the book, and upon most readers made but little im- 
pression, from the fact of being dwarfed in importance 
by the praise everywhere heaped upon the poet. 

Successful as was the work in England, it did not 
attract the attention of Voltaire at the time. He per- 
haps knew nothing of it until a good while later, when 
it was translated into French, as a consequence of the 

308 



ATTACK AND DEFENCE IN ENGLAND 

controversy about Shakespeare which he himself had 
set in motion. But his side Avas not without a defender 
even in the land of his critic. It was only a few years 
after the publication of Mrs. Montagu's work that a 
writer in the most widely circulated English periodical 
of the century was able to announce that the distin- 
guished female champion of Shakespeare had found an 
antagonist well worthy of her notice, and if possible of 
her correction. 1 This was a man little known then, and 
so much less since that the work he produced has not 
unfrec[uently been attributed to some one else. His 
name was Edward Taylor. The son of a dignitary in 
the English church, after his education at Eton and 
Cambridge he had gone to Germany to pursue the study 
of the civil law. He remained on the Continent several 
years. He was there at the time when French ideas 
about the stage were not merely prevalent but prevail- 
ing. The influence of Voltaire was at its highest. In 
the visits he paid to various parts of Europe Taylor 
found all men of substantially the same way of thinking. 
He came back to England somewhere about 1770, and 
spent the rest of his life in retirement. He came back 
Avith the fullest belief in the views about Shakespeare 
and the stage Avhich the large majority of his country- 
men were now disposed to question, and many had 
begun to abandon. Naturally the heterodox opinions 
expressed filled him with pain where they did not with 
disgust. The. attack by Dr. Johnson upon the unities, 
in his celebrated preface, excited his indignation. The 
remarks of Mrs. Montagu about Corneille and Racine 

1 Geutlemaa's Magazine, February, 1775, vol. xlv. p. 90. 
309 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

he regarded as unfair. These feelings led him to burst 
forth from his retirement in a reply to both. His treatise 
was entitled ' Cursory Remarks on Tragedy, on Shake- 
speare, and on certain French and Italian Poets, princi- 
pally Tragedians.' It appeared in ^\x\y, 1774. 

The work is written from a position with which we 
in modern times have grown to be reasonably familiar. 
It is that of the cosmopolitan who rises so superior to the 
prejudices of birth and nationality that he prefers the 
productions or institutions of any other country or race 
to those of his own. So well acquainted have we 
become with this class of persons that their mental 
processes, or what they call such, have ceased in conse- 
quence either to irritate or to interest. They now 
serve little other purpose than to impose upon us an 
additional tribute of that tediousness which the goddess 
of ennui exacts as a compensatory due for the increase 
of knowledge and the advance of civilization. Such 
men, however, have always existed, and will always 
continue to exist. Shakespeare, whose all-embracing 
eye missed nothing, recognized them in the so-called 
Italianated travellers of his time. He characterized them 
duly. " Farewell, monsieur traveller," says Rosalind to 
Jaques. " Look you disable all the benefits of your own 
country, be out of love with your nativity, and almost 
chide God for making you that countenance you are, or 
I will scarce think you have swam in a gondola." 

Of the class of works produced by minds of this calibre 
and character, Taylor's treatise was an excellent example. 
He accepted Voltaire's estimate of Shakespeare with- 
out reservation. The tone throughout his volume is 

310 



ATTACK AND DEFENCE IN ENGLAND 

the condescending tone of him who recognizes that his 
freedom from national prepossessions and his familiarity 
with foreign literatures have lifted his judgment far above 
that of the herd. From the eminence he had attained he 
could survey everything with that fine impartiality which 
it was not in the power of those to exhibit who lacked his 
privileges of observation. He was glad indeed to enter- 
tain a high opinion of Shakespeare in certain waj'S. But 
he must not be asked, he told us, to consider the grotesque 
and misshapen pieces this writer had produced as speci- 
mens of great dramatic art. No record exists to indicate 
that any such question had ever been asked him. He un- 
questionably recognized, however, that it would be a mis- 
fortune for his countrymen, if silence on his part should 
deprive them of the benefit to be derived from his obser- 
vations and reflections ; if in consequence of his failure 
to enlighten them, tliey should continue to go wrong in 
their estimate of their greatest dramatist, when they could 
so easily be set right. Therefore he laid clearly before 
them his exact position. He conceded that in the ca- 
pacity of characterization Shakespeare was unsurpassed. 
As a poet pure and simple he rose above all ; it was only 
as a tragic poet that he had failed. 

The interest of this book, so far as it has any interest 
now, is due to its being about the last expression of what 
in the earlier part of the century had been a very 
prevalent critical view. There is nothing in the work 
which is original. The attitude is the old attitude ; the 
examples are the old examples ; the beliefs are the old 
beliefs. Not to Voltaire himself were the unities of 
time and place dearer. The introduction consisted of a 

311 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

fierce attack upon "a certain critic" for the views he 
had expressed in regard to these rules. This critic was 
Dr. Johnson. Taylor's argument in behalf of their 
rightfulness was the one which came to be regularly 
employed after the preface to Shakespeare had been 
published ; it seems never to have been made prominent 
before, if indeed brought forward at all. It was not so 
much the impossibility of the change of scene which 
was henceforth insisted upon, as its impropriety. The 
spectator's feelings were supposed to be lacerated and his 
life made temporarily miserable by being asked to 
imagine himself in one place at the beginning of a 
drama, and in a subsequent scene to be transported to a 
spot scores and even hundreds of miles away. The 
possibility of the existence of such feelings it has been 
perhaps rash to question. Examples of like states of 
mind can be observed in other fields of literary contro- 
versy. Instances exist in the history of criticism where 
some men have been rendered unhappy because blank 
verse has been used in poetry instead of ryme. Others 
have been similarly afflicted because ryme has been 
used instead of blank verse. There is little limit to 
man's capability of making himself miserable ; and if one 
gives himself up with his whole heart to the task of 
becoming wretched because certain practices are not 
observed — be it of the unities or of anything else — he 
can feel a reasonable confidence that his efforts, if long 
enough continued, will be rewarded with success. 

But if there was nothing new in Taylor's reasoning, 
he made up for its lack of novelty by vehemence of 
assertion. In the conclusion of his introduction he pro- 

312 



ATTACK AND DEFENCE IN ENGLAND 

fessed himself ashamed to argue any longer in defence 
of a doctrine which was not only supported by authorities 
of greatest weight and consequence, but was in itself 
consistent with reason and good sense. Having thus 
disposed of Dr. Johnson in the introductory matter, he 
turned his attention to the ' Essay ' of Mrs. Montagu — 
especially to that portion of it which was taken up with 
comments on Corneille and Racine. These writings he 
defended from her criticisms, though he never once 
mentioned her name or indicated her sex. He contro- 
verted in particular the view which ranked Shakespeare 
superior to these two tragedians. To both he was 
distinctly inferior as a dramatic artist. On his exact 
merits he was able to pronounce a definite opinion. 
" With an impartiality," he said, " that becomes every 
man who dares to think for himvself, let us allow him 
great merit as a comic writer, greater still as a poet, but 
little, very little, as a tragedian." But though in this 
last particular Taylor celebrated the superiority of both 
Corneille and Racine, he reserved his highest praise for 
Voltaire. He it was who had brought the French 
drama to the utmost degree of perfection to which it 
was capable of being raised. Inferentially he was a 
much greater dramatist than Shakespeare. Taylor did 
not assert this ; but it follows legitimately from what he 
said. The French author seems never to have known 
the height to which he had been exalted by his English 
admirer. This work apparently failed to fall under his 
eye. It was unfortunate for him, unfortunate for its 
author ; for the admiration expressed, unlike Walpole's, 
was genuine and sincere ; and whatever opinion we may 

313 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

entertain of its intelligence, it would have been reckoned 
by Voltaire as displaying peculiarly fine critical judgment. 
This treatise was spoken of very respectfully in the 
periodical press, wherever it was criticised at all. But 
it excited attention nowhere else. Dr. Johnson took not 
the least notice of the attack made upon himself. It is 
possible that he never heard of its existence ; it is 
certain that Boswell makes to it no reference. One of 
the reviewers asserted that as against Johnson the 
author had the advantage ; but, there was added, 
"against the literary Amazon he gains no ground."^ 
The literary Amazon preserved the same silence as the 
lexicographer. To the modern reader indeed there is 
something entertaining in Mrs. Montagu on the one 
hand, appearing as the champion of Shakespeare and 
the critic of Corneille ; and on the other, Taylor as the 
champion of Corneille and the expounder of Shake- 
speare's inferiority as a dramatic artist. Yet there was 
more propriety about it than shows on the surface. 
The two champions were very well-matched. Both 
made use of the very amplest of vocabularies. As, with 
unconscious irony, a reviewer said of one of them, both 
expressed themselves " in a genteel style of language." 
Of their eloquence, their taste, and their erudition critics 
spoke in glowing terms and with equal justice. Both 
could talk learnedly in regard to matters they knew little 
about; and the arguments of both, when subjected to 
strict scrutiny, hardly amount to much more than the 
assertion of personal opinion. 

1 Montlily Review, vol. li. p. 281, October, 1774. 



314 



CHAPTER XVI 

PESSEVflSTlC VIEWS OF VOLTAITIE 

It was not the unwillingness of the English to accept 
his estimate of their greatest dramatist which disturbed 
Voltaire. From the middle of the century, if not 
earlier, he had abandoned all hope of seeing them con- 
verted from the error of their ways. In the failure to 
say anything about Shakespeare during the sixth decade, 
there had been no affectation on his part. He had 
taught the Continent all that it was really necessary to 
know about the English dramatist. He had pointed out 
precisely his merits and defects. His duty had accord- 
ingly been discharged, and he was willing at the time to 
abide by the results. To him, therefore, the considera- 
tion of Shakespeare had become a closed incident. The 
subject had been adequately discussed ; the verdict had 
been pronounced. There was no need of saying any- 
thing more. 

As he was something of a philanthropist as well as a 
philosopher, the aberration of the English brought him, 
to be sure, a certain regret. That a nation usually so 
sensible should miss the right way, when it had been 
so clearly pointed out to them by Addison, was indeed 
something almost inexplicable. But he had learned to 
recognize the hopelessness of efforts to rescue these 
deluded fanatics from the slough into which they were 

315 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

constantly plunging deeper. While his own disbelief in 
Shakespeare was increasing, at least in viralence of 
expression, if not in intensity of feeling, the belief of 
Englishmen in their dramatist was, on the other hand, 
even more distinctly increasing. Men with opinions 
like those of Bolingbroke, Chesterfield, and Hume un- 
doubtedly continued to exist. Traces of them can be 
found not unf requently in the periodicals of the time, and 
they occasionally promulgated their opinions, as did Rich- 
ardson and Blair, from their seats in the universities. 
But Voltaire saw that such persons were not merely in 
a minority, but in a minority constantly becoming 
smaller. Even most of those who were willing to con- 
cede that Shakespeare did not obey the laws, and was 
therefore, strictly speaking, deficient in art, still insisted 
upon the superiority of his genius ; still maintained, as 
the merest matter of course, that in tragedy he far 
surpassed Corneille and Racine, and in comedy was the 
equal of Moliere. But a party was now coming to the 
front who denied that the defects imputed to him were 
defects. They were beginning to express contempt for 
the observances which in Voltaire's eyes constituted the 
decorum, the elegance, the perfection of theatrical art. 
This was the harm which devotion to Shakespeare had 
wrought. The English had become indissolubly wedded 
to a barbarous taste. It was to be regretted ; but it 
could not be remedied. The French critic felt about 
them as did the Hebrew prophet about Ephraim. They 
were joined to their idols, and therefore to be let alone. 

His feeling of hopelessness about the countrymen of 
Shakespeare had been manifested, as we have seen, by 

316 



PESSIMISTIC VIEWS OF VOLTAIRE 

the middle of the century ; ^ but as time went on it took 
a deeper hold of his heart. Two years before his death 
he had an interview with an English traveller, the Rev. 
Martin Sherlock, whom readers of Carlyle's ' Frederick 
the Great ' will remember. Sherlock gave a pretty full 
account of the conversation. He represented Voltaire 
as saying some very shocking things about Moses. It 
is needless to remark that a man who could talk in a 
reckless way about the Hebrew lawgiver would not 
exhibit much delicacy in discussing the English drama- 
tist. In response to Sherlock's inquiry he expressed his 
assent to Bolingbroke's assertion that the English had 
not one good tragedy. The inevitable ' Cato ' of Addison 
was once more brought on the carpet. Still Voltaire 
had never refused to concede that a power greater than 
Addison possessed had definitely determined the future 
of the English stage. "Shakespeare," he said, "had a 
wondei^ful genius, but no taste. He has spoiled the 
taste of the nation. He has been their taste for two 
hundred years, and what is the taste of a nation for two 
hundred years will be so for two thousand. This taste 
becomes a religion, and there are in your country many 
fanatics in regard to that author." ^ 

One argument to prove the inferiority of Shakespeare 
upon which Voltaire laid special stress was that, while 
the works of the French tragedians were acted every- 
where, the English dramatist had never been able to 
overleap the narrow bounds of nationality. It became 
the burden of his cry that Shakespeare was known to 

1 See pa^e 137. 

2 Letters from an English Traveller (1780) ; letter xxiii. p. 156. 

317 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

the English only, and cared for by them only. He 
asserted it in his ' Appeal to the Nations,' written nearly 
twenty years before his death. From that time onward 
he enforced it again and again both in public and in 
private. His words were repeated ever3nvhere by his 
disciples. On the failure of Shakespeare to interest 
men of other races he expressed himself, for illustration, 
in the following manner in a letter to Saurin written as 
early as 1765. " He was a savage," he said, " who had 
some imagination. He has written many happy lines ; 
but his pieces can please only at London and in Canada. 
It is not a good sign for the taste of a nation when that 
which it admires meets with favor only at home."^ It 
was in this way that he continued to talk till the end 
of his life. His last public utterances called special 
attention to the differences in this respect between the 
fortunes of the tragic writers of the two nations. In 
his first letter to the French Academy in 1776 he 
declared that England was opposed in her dramatic 
belief and practice to the rest of Europe. " On no 
foreign theatre," he wrote, "has any piece of Shake- 
speare ever been represented." He took up the same 
theme in his second letter which was prefixed to his 
tragedy of Irene. There he declared that the French 
masterpieces were acted before all the courts of Europe 
and in the Italian academies. " They are played," he 
wrote, " from the borders of the Arctic sea to the sea 
that separates Europe from Africa. Let the same honor 
be done to a single piece of Shakespeare, and then we 
shall be able to enter into an argument." 

1 Letter of Dec. 4, 1765. 
318 



PESSIMISTIC VIEWS OF VOLTAIRE 

Yet while lie was uttering these words, the literary 
revolution was in full progress in Germany which was 
to dethrone Corneille, Racine, and himself, and to raise 
Shakespeare, not to one of these vacated thrones, but to 
a throne above them all. He did not appear to heed 
the violent reaction which was taking place in that 
country against the dogmas of the French school of 
criticism and the practices of the French stage. The 
agitation which had been set in motion by Lessing had 
been carried forward and deepened and broadened by 
Herder. To Shakespeare the young and daring spirits 
of the Storm and Stress school were paying their tribute 
of unquestioning allegiance. He was exalted as the 
supreme god of the theatrical world ; all other authors 
had become inferior deities. At the very time indeed 
that the French writer was proclaiming that not a 
single play of the English dramatist had been produced 
upon a foreign stage, the famous actor Schroder was 
bringing out with unexampled success on the boards of 
the Hamburg theatre piece after piece of Shakespeare. 
The great poet had already begun his conquering march. 
Accordingly Voltaire's theory that the English drama 
was the representative of bad taste, because it was op- 
posed to the taste of other nations, was undergoing demo- 
lition before his very eyes. He did not seem to see it. 
Perhaps it was because the dangers nearer home which he 
felt approaching absorbed his attention, or at any rate di- 
verted his mind from contemplating those at a distance. 

These dangers which threatened all which he held 
most dear had been for a long time gathering. Symptoms 
of revolt against the rigid rules of the French theatre 

319 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

had been manifesting themselves with increasing force 
since the middle of the century. It was in part due to 
the general disposition then prevalent to throw oif all 
restraints of mere authority. It was likewise due to 
the steadily increasing familiarity with the masterpieces 
of foreign stages. In them was found a practice utterly 
at variance with the theories of the classicists. Lope de 
Vega, Calderon, and Shakespeare had all disregarded 
the unities, had all intermingled comic scenes with 
tragic in their writings. Acquaintance with their plays 
had begun to affect the belief of men of letters. It was, 
to be sure, only in the feeblest way that they ventured to 
carry their belief into practice, even if they ventured 
to do so at all. They acted as did the English revolters 
of the eighteenth century against the doctrines of 
classicism, or as Lessing in Germany, who had labo- 
riously pointed out the inapplicability of these doctrines 
to modern conditions. Like them they conformed to a 
faith which they did not hold. But the scepticism was 
there, and it constantly grew more defiant in its utter- 
ance. As early as 1764 Voltaire had denounced in the 
preface to his version of ' Julius Csesar ' the revolt 
which had been going on against the long-established 
usages of the French stage. At that time he had com- 
paratively little fear of its extension. While he disliked, 
he had not learned to dread. Of some things indeed 
he was calmly confident. La Motte, he told us in his 
' Commentaries on Corneille,' had argued against the 
observance of the unities. That heresy, he observed, 
had not made any headway.^ 

^ Remarques sur les discours de Corneille. 

320 



PESSIMISTIC VIEWS OF VOLTAIRE 

Rut as time passed on, he lost his sense of secu^it3^ 
The condition of things in France troubled him. Dur- 
ing the last dozen years of his life his writings, espe- 
cially his correspondence, are filled with the most 
dolorous lamentations as to the future of literature. 
Along with it was a fiery wrath against most of the 
contemporary works that gained the favor of the public. 
Not content with the time-honored epithets of Goth and 
Gothic and Vandal to designate the writers and writings 
he despised, he added the term Allobroge, taken from 
the name of the tribe which had inhabited the region 
where he had made his home. But the appellation he 
came to favor particularly was that of Velches. After 
using it in a treatise published in 1764, it appeared 
pretty frequently in his wiitings whenever he wished to 
express a pretty strong feeling of disgust. Etymolog- 
ically the word, like the English " Welsh," is a Teutonic 
derivative from the Latin Gallus. With the Germans 
it designated the inhabitants of France or Italy. As 
used by Voltaire it referred to the descendants of the 
barbarous Celtic tribes which inhabited ancient Gaul, 
and was equivalent to Goth in the disparaging sense 
that term had everywhere in the eighteenth century, or 
to Philistine as that was employed in the nineteenth. 
It is the enemies of light and learning and art who are 
meant. Specifically Voltaire applied it to those who 
liked in literature what he disliked. Those possessed 
of true taste — that is, the same taste as his own — were 
Frenchmen ; all others were Velches. During his later 
life one infers from his writings that the latter must 
have constituted a powerful body. 
21 321 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

His correspondence during these years bears ample 
witness to the feelings of dissatisfaction with which he 
looked upon the literary situation in France. Every- 
thing in his opinion was in a state of decadence. Pre- 
cision, clearness, grace had for a long time gone out of 
fashion. Ahnost every one who wrote, whether in prose 
or verse, wrote in a style allobroge and unintelligible.^ 
The great age had passed away and had given place to 
the petty. The bizarre had succeeded to the natural.^ 
France was encountering the lot of all nations which 
cultivated literature. Each had its one brilliant period 
for ten periods in which the despicable and the vile 
prevailed.^ True as was the general decadence, it was 
particularly true of the drama. Men had no longer 
strength enough to write tragedy, or wit enough to write 
comedy. Especially bad was the taste that reigned at 
Paris. Nothing was so applauded there as pieces fit only 
to be played at fairs. Voltaire made no effort to conceal 
his contempt for the insipid plays produced at the capital, 
the dull authors who wrote them, the spiritless actors who 
performed them.* Nothing was so much in favor as 
comic opera ; but that was not going to regenerate the 
stage. " We are to-day in the mire," he wrote in 1767, 
" and the semi-quavers will not drag us out." ^ 

It was, in fine, the age of the bizarre and the gigant- 
esque. So he summed up the situation. The drama 

1 Letter to La Harpe of Feb. 25, 1772. 

2 Letter to M. de Chabanon, Dec. 7, 1767, and to D'Argental, Sept. 
26, 1770. 

3 Letter to D'Argental, Dec. 7, 1767. 

4 Letter to M. de. Thibouville, Murch 15, 1769. 
* Letter to M. Damilaville of Sept. 4, 1767. 

322 



PESSIMISTIC VIEWS OF VOLTAIRE 

had gone to pieces in its two great branches. Comedy 
was as dead as the Roman empire itself.^ Nothing suc- 
ceeded but the sentimentaL It would be an imperti- 
nence to make any one laugh.^ It was even worse in 
tragedy. The crowning atrocity was ready to be perpe- 
trated ; and there was every indication that it would be 
received with favor. " I have been told of a tragedy in 
prose," he wrote in 1770, " which it is said, will meet 
with success. See tliere the finishing stroke given 
to the fine arts." ^ This final blow of fate he saw no 
prospect of averting. " We are to have it," he repeated 
later of the prose tragedy. " The world is going to 
end," he exclaimed ; " Antichrist has come." * This was 
the constant burden of his complaint about the one art 
in which he took the deepest interest. The theatre, he 
wrote to Richelieu, was like everything else, going to 
the devil.^ The enemies of taste were even more 
powerful than those of reason. " Go on, my Velches," 
he said in the bitterness of liis soul ; " may God bless you ! 
You are the scum of the human race." ^ He was to die 
soon, but the burden of his complaint was that the stage 
would die before him.'^ All he could comfort himself 
with was the thought that the time would come when 
the pieces now so much praised would sink into the 
river of oblivion, while the great works of the age of 
Louis XIV. would be found floating on its surface. 

1 Letter of Nov. 30, 1767, to M. de Chabanon. 

2 Letter of April 25, 1770, to LeKain. 

2 Letter of Sept. 26, 1770, to D'Argeiital. ' 
•» Letter of Sept. 5, 1772, to D'Argciital. 
6 Letter of Feb. 27, 1769. 
" Letter of Sept. 2, 1767, to D' Argental. 
^ Letter of Oct. 16, 1767, to D'Argental. 
323 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

The warmest admirers of Voltaire must concede that 
in his latest years he abused the privilege of the aged to 
praise the past at the expense of the present. The pes- 
simistic views he took were largely due to the fact that 
men were beginning to think differently from him who 
had so long been tlie literary dictator of Europe. His 
attitude towards literature is in consequence in striking 
contrast with that which he maintained towards other 
subjects. The great advocate of toleration in matters of 
religion and politics was the most intolerant of men in 
the matter of dramatic art. He had an abiding confi- 
dence — it can not be called a serene one — that the 
taste which he himself had was the only taste worth 
having. He resented, he resisted attempts to set up 
any other standards than those he approved, or to in- 
troduce any practices which he disapproved. All means 
to counteract such efforts were legitimate. For this pur- 
pose he could not wield the axe or kindle the fagot; 
but all the powers of irony, of sarcasm, of invective he 
possessed in amplest measure, — and it must be added 
those of misrepresentation and calumny — these he em- 
ployed without hesitation and without scruple. Could 
he have had his way, he would have shown himself the 
indefatigable and relentless persecutor in the work of 
enforcing the true gospel of taste and in visiting with 
condign punishment all heretical dissent. And nothing 
irritated him more than that France should seem to turn 
away from her own drama, and worship that of other 
nations. His anger was directed against the imitators 
of these rude writers of foreign lands and against the 
writers themselves. The Spanish stage was as bad as 

324 



PESSIMISTIC VIEWS OF VOLTAIRE 

the English. The example of Lope de Vega was as 
much to be avoided as that of Shakespeare. But the 
former served little more than to point a moral. The 
last was a present threatening peril. 

There was further a personal as well as a hterary 
reason for his unwillingness to have Shakespeare's writ- 
ings too well known. He would not have admitted it 
to others ; perhaps he would not have done so to him- 
self. Yet Voltaire must necessarily have been conscious 
of how much he was indebted to the English dramatist. 
He was equally conscious that he had never acknowl- 
edged it, save in a single instance where at first he 
had felt it to be for his interest to take that course. 
From the outset the English had naturally known of 
the obligations he lay under. After his attacks upon 
Shakespeare they dwelt upon his plagiarism, as they 
termed it, persistently. So long, however, as such an 
accusation was confined to them he did not concern him- 
self about it. Anything said in their tongue was little 
likely in those days to reach the ears of his constituency 
of the Continent. Men dwelling there might read Eng- 
lish romances, or even poetry ; but they were not af- 
fected by English criticism. But the charge of plagiar- 
ism from Shakespeare was now extending from England 
to France. He became sensitive to it. No one can fail 
to remark this feeling on his part who reads the preface 
composed by himself, but purporting to come from the 
publishers, which was prefixed to his version of ' Julius 
Csesar.' 

One of the paragraphs of this preface is a quasi- 
defence of himself from the charge of having borrowed 

325 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

from the English dramatist. Oq this same subject he 
liberated his soul very freely in his notes. He took care 
to point out that both authors had based their plays 
upon the narratives contained in Plutarch. They nat- 
urally made use of the same incidents, and gave the 
same details. This would explain the resemblances be- 
tween the two pieces where they resembled each other 
at all. Men, in consequence, he said, would be enabled 
to see if Voltaire owed so much to Shakespeare as had 
been pretended. What he neglected to mention, how- 
ever, was that he had carefully refrained from translat- 
ing those passages of the original which in his tragedy he 
had taken from the English author, but which the Eng- 
lish author had not taken from Plutarch. It was clear 
that with increasing familiarity with Shakespeare, knowl- 
edge of these obligations on his part would become more 
widely diffused. It was already manifest to a few at 
the time ; it was soon to be revealed to many by the 
agency of Le Tourneur's version. Some of his admirers 
admitted the fact cheerfully. In their eyes no discredit 
attached to him for that reason. So far their contention 
was a just one. It was the failure to acknowledge it, 
the effort to hide it, that alone was censurable. Coupled 
too with this concealment, his now constant depreciation 
of the man to whom he was indebted could hardly be 
regarded as being in the best of taste. 

Naturally he was little disposed to look with approval 
upon the efforts to naturalize Shakespeare upon the 
French stage which about this time were beginning to 
be made. Few of them, however, met with any more 
favor from the public than they did from him. But one 

326 



PESSIMISTIC VIEWS OF VOLTAIRE 

exception there was to this general indifference. In 1769 
an adaptation of ' Hamlet ' was brought out at Paris. 
It was attended with great success. Its author was 
Ducis, who was fated to succeed to the chair in the 
Academy which Voltaire's death had vacated. Three 
years later followed with similar good fortune a version 
of ' Romeo and Juliet ' by the same writer. The Patri- 
arch of Ferney, as he was now commonly called, heard 
of these occurrences, in his retreat near the Genevan lake. 
He was not pleased. The applause which had been 
lavished upon such pieces was an additional evidence of 
the general decadence. This was the view he took be- 
fore he read either of the works. In regard to Hamlet 
he gave A'ent to his dissatisfaction in a letter to D'Argen- 
tal. " The spectres are going to become the fashion," 
he wrote. " I have opened the course modestly ; they 
are now going to run at full speed. I have wished to 
enliven the stage somewhat by more action ; and every- 
thing has become absolutely action and pantomime. 
Nothing is so sacred that it is not abused. In every- 
thing we are going to plunge into the extravagant and 
the gigantesque. Farewell to the beautiful, farewell 
to tender sentiment, farewell to everything. Music will 
soon be no more than an Italian charivari ; and our 
dramatic poetry only feats of leger-de-main." ^ The same 
feeling showed itself when he heard of the favor with 
which Ducis's adaptation of ' Romeo and Juliet ' had been 
received. His own play of Les Lois de Minos had not 
secured representation. " I console myself for the suc- 
cess of this Romeo,'' lie wrote, "and for the success 

i Letter of Oct. 13, 1709. 
327 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

of all the absurd works written in a barbarous style, of 
whicb our Velches have so often been the dupes. It 
must be that a piece passably written should be ignored 
when the Visigoth pieces are run after." ^ 

The reading of these plays of Ducis could not have 
failed, however, to bring him a certain degree of comfort. 
They assuredly relieved him of any anxiety he may have 
felt that Shakespeare would be revealed by them to his 
countrymen. Ducis knew nothing of English. The two 
tragedies he had then adapted were taken not from the 
original, but from the fragmentary versions of La Place. 
In the eyes of the editor of his works, who in 1826 con- 
tinued to repeat the conventional criticism of the eigh- 
teenth century, he had distinctly improved upon the 
original. " M. Ducis," he wrote, " with an art which men 
would have admired more if they had been better able 
to appreciate the difficulties of the undertaking, has 
known how to reduce to proportion and to subject to the 
laws established by our dramatic system, the gigantesque 
and monstrous works of the English tragedian. He has 
known how to disengage his simple and sublime traits 
from the impure alloy which dishonors them, and to 
render them with that force, that fervor, that truth of 
expression which allies the claims of imitative talent with 
those of original genius, which almost equalizes them." ^ 

Far more indeed than Voltaire himself had Ducis con- 
formed in many particulars to the canons of French art. 
The former kept constantly asserting that he had wished 
to enlarge only a little the bounds of the drama. He had 

1 I,etter to D'Argental of September 5, 1772. 

2 Oiuvres de J. F. Ducis (1826), tome i. p. %. 

328 



PESSIMISTIC VIEWS OF VOLTAIRE 

expressed anxiety at the career of dramatic extravagance 
which was now to be run, especially in the way of spec- 
tral appearances. There was no need of his fear. His 
ghost in Semiramis had carried audacity and defiance of 
convention to its extreme by appearing in the day-time 
in the midst of a crowded assembly. The ghost which 
Ducis introduced was of so retiring a character that he 
never showed himself to the spectators at all. Once only 
was there a fleeting glimpse conveyed of his actual exist- 
ence, when Hamlet was heard addressing him behind the 
scenes in these words : 

" Fly, dreadful spectre ! 
Carry to the depths of the grave thy frightful aspect. " * 

The ghost seems to have been more terrified than the 
one to whom he appeared ; for he heeded the injunction 
and never presented himself again, even in the compara- 
tive safety of the green-room. All we learn about him 
henceforth is from the disclosures made by Hamlet to his 
friend, Norceste. Voltaire must have recognized that in 
these faintest of reproductions there was as little danger 
of Shakespeare's manner and power being made known 
to his countrymen as there had been through his own 
representations and translations. 

1 Pucis, Hamlet, acte ii. scene 5. 



329 



CHAPTER XVII 

LETOURNEUR'S translation of SHAKESPEARE 

The partial translation of Shakespeare by La Place 
Voltaire had found fault with repeatedly. He had cen- 
sured it in particular for what he called its unfaithful- 
ness. Much written by the EngUsh dramatist had in his 
opinion been modified or omitted in order to adapt the 
language employed to the dehcacy and politeness of the 
French. La Place's version was confessedly only of parts 
of plays, not of the whole of them. He had naturally 
selected those scenes which struck him as most charac- 
teristic of his author or which would exhibit him at his 
best. The feeling had now come to amount almost to a 
mania with Voltaire that those passages should be chosen 
by preference wliich would exhibit him at his worst. 
This was the only way in which a real knowledge of the 
English theatre could be conveyed to his countrymen. 

Fragmentary and inadequate as was in many ways this 
translation, it had assuredly accomplished a great deal in 
making the French acquainted with Shakespeare. Still, 
it was not a work that could impart genuine or thorough 
knowledge of the dramatist. Nor could it have done so, 
had the rendering been infinitely better than it was. For 
that it was altogether too imperfect. While, therefore, it 
had annoyed Voltaire, it had not caused him any anxiety. 
He felt indeed a certain confidence in the triumph of his 

330 



LETOURNEUR'S TRANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

own views after he had made that word for word and line 
for line translation of ' Julius Csesar,' Avhich had revealed 
to the nations the deficiency of Shakespeare in the high- 
est art. He felt that in so doing he had satisfied all 
reasonable requirements of the Continent. He clearly 
entertained no expectation of the appearance of a com- 
plete translation of the works of this rude dramatist. 
It was impossible that pieces in which the coarse taste of 
the English delighted could be represented in their gross- 
ness to a refined and polished people like the French. 
This may seem a little strange to us now. But we must 
not forget that the French of the eighteenth century, 
however lawless they may have been in act, paid partic- 
ular attention to delicacy of speech. A translation of 
* Tristram Shandy ' had been brought out at Paris. Vol- 
taire wrote a review of it — at least it is usually ascribed 
to him — in which he observed that certain omissions 
had been made. He added with much satisfaction that a 
complete translation could no more be produced of Sterne 
than it could of Shakespeare, " We are hving at a time," 
he said, " when the most singular works are attempted, 
but not when they succeed." 

It was not a long while after the appearance of the 
' Commentaries on Corneille ' that he wrote these words. 
From the comparatively serene state of mind indicated by 
them he was rudely awakened some ten years later by 
the sight of two volumes of a translation of Shakespeare 
with the promise of others to follow, till all the plays 
had been rendered into French. The work bore on its 
titlepage that it was dedicated to the king. It contained 
a list of more than eight hundred subscribers. These 

331 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

had put themselves down for over twelve hundred copies. 
The character of the names was even more striking than 
their number. At their head stood the king and the 
queen. Following them were the other members of the 
royal family, the brothers and the aunts of the monarch. 
Launched under such auspices the undertaking had been 
assured of success from the outset. The list of subscrib- 
ers was in truth fairly dazzling. It included names of 
members of the nobility of every grade and of influential 
men of every profession. Princes, dukes, marquises, 
counts, viscounts, chevaliers, or the consorts of such 
titled persons, were found on every page. Dignitaries 
of the cliurch, archbishops and bishops, were not absent. 
Along with them were ofiicers of the army and of the 
navy, members of the Academy, judges, advocates, pro- 
fessors, physicians, architects, bankers, mayors of cities. 
Nor was the subscription confined to France. It came 
from all over Europe. Voltaire's friend and correspond- 
ent, the Empress of Russia, was on the list, besides 
official representatives of various other powers. About 
one fourth of the supporters of the enterprise were Eng- 
lishmen. At the head of these were the king and the 
Prince of Wales. Among them can be found the name 
of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and naturally those of 
the two distinguished actors, Garrick and Henderson. 
Rarely if ever has an undertaking of this particular 
nature been begun with brighter prospects. 

The work was not only dedicated to the king ; it con- 
tained an epistle addressed to him. This was signed by 
the Comte de Catuelan, Le Tourneur, and Fontaine- 
Malherbe. These were the three original collaborators 

.332 



LETOURNEUIVS TRANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

in the translation. But though the first place was given 
as a matter of courtesy to the noble, he who stood 
second on the list was the one really responsible for the 
undertaking. Pierre Le Tourneur, if biographical 
notices are to be trusted, was a man of high character, 
of blameless conduct, free from anxiety about his own 
reputation and from envy at the reputation of others. 
Furthermore, he was possessed of a good deal of ability. 
He devoted his life largely to making known to his 
countrymen the literature of foreign countries, especially 
of England. One of his earliest works was a translation 
of the ' Night Thoughts ' of Young. One of his latest 
was a translation of the ' Clarissa ' of Richardson. At 
the very time he was engaged on this, his most important 
undertaking, the version of Shakespeare, he produced 
also a version of Ossian. His character and his qualifi- 
cations had been the means of securing him various 
positions of importance and trust. At this particular 
period he was secretary to the king's brother, who was 
subsequently to ascend the throne as Louis XVIH. It 
was probably through the relation he held to this person 
that the undertaking came to receive the support of the 
royal family. 

The translation was in prose. The first two volumes 
of it appeared in March 1776. These contained versions 
of ' Othello,' ' The Tempest,' and of ' Julius Caesar.' Of 
the way the original was rendered, Voltaire never ex- 
pressed an opinion, favorable or unfavorable, beyond his 
usual censure of unfaithfulness in either omitting or 
softening any of the vulgar phrases which he himself 
now invariably took pains to render in their original 

333 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

coarseness, and not unfrequently with additional coarse- 
ness, as fair specimens of Shakespeare's general manner. 
What interested him, what excited him, was not so much 
the translation, as the prefatory matter with which it 
had been introduced. He was equally outraged by what 
he found in it and by what he did not find. The 
opinions expressed were the ostensible ground upon 
which he based his attack upon the work ; but a princi- 
pal inspiring motive was what it had failed to say. This 
prefatory matter, which extends to one hundred and 
forty pages, plays so important a part in the controversy 
which now arose that it is necessary to give of it a 
fairly full account. It is interesting, furthermore, as 
indicating the point of view which a certain body of 
Frenchmen were now coming to take. 

It began with the Epistle to the King which has been 
already mentioned. This was full of the warmest praise 
of the great English dramatist. It contained many 
things which, whether so intended or not, Voltaire 
might construe as an attack upon his proceedings, as 
they certainly were upon his opinions. It asserted that 
Shakespeare had never been exhibited to a rival nation, 
superb in its taste, save under a kind of ridiculous 
travesty which disfigured his beautiful proportions. 
This may possibly have been a reference to the versions 
of ' Hamlet ' and ' Romeo and Juliet,' which had been 
made by Ducis. These had brought forth from Voltaire 
himself a number of subdued growls; but there had 
been nothing in their character to produce any actual 
explosion on his part. They bore tlie slightest possible 
relation to their originals ; and while he was irritated 

334 



LETOURNEUR'S TRANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

by the success they met, he was not alarmed by it. 
But it is hardly likely that Le Tourneur had in mind 
an author like Duels, who was as ardent an admirer of 
Shakespeare as he was himself. It seems more reasonable 
to suppose that the ridiculous travesties spoken of by the 
translator alluded to Voltaire's description of the plot 
of ' Hamlet ' and his version of ' Juhus Caesar.' The 
phrase employed was certainly not inappropriate. 

There were other things as bad in the Epistle, if not 
worse. The king was well known to have a taste for 
seeking the society of the humblest of his subjects. In 
this respect he was told that Shakespeare resembled 
him. Like him the dramatist had gone to seek for 
truth and nature, and for the objects of his benevolence 
under the lowly roof of the laborer and the artisan. 
As the monarch had desired to know all classes, so 
Shakespeare had not disdained to paint them. Why 
should the philosopher and the man of letters be 
prouder than their sovereign, and blush to make the 
acquaintance of persons in humble stations of life? 
It was quite evident that the monarch and the drama- 
tist were fully in sympathy with each other. " In these 
first days of justice and impartiality," went on tlie 
Epistle, " Shakespeare can appear with confidence in 
the country of Corneille and Racine and Moliere, to 
ask of the French the tribute of gloiy which each 
people gives to genius, and which he would have re- 
ceived from these three great men, had he been known 
to them." 

This Epistle was universally regarded by the clas- 
sicists as being in the worst possible taste. Immediately 

335 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

following it were a number of pages devoted to con- 
troverting certain statements which had been made 
by Marraontel. That author had published a few years 
before a dissertation in which he had allowed himself 
the luxury of indulging in certain assertions about 
Shakespeare and the English theatre and people. They 
were the outcome of crude ideas working upon scanty 
and imperfect information. Marmontel plainly knew 
nothing at first hand of what he was talking about. 
All his facts came to him through the medium of 
Voltaire, and, not very correct in the first instance, had 
been badly damaged in the transmission. He informed 
us, for example, that Shakespeare began writing at the 
commencement of the seventeenth century, and that he 
seems to have had an acquaintance with the irregular 
Spanish theatre. This last statement he derived and 
developed from Voltaire's remarks upon the Cid in his 
' Commentaries on Corneille.' That author had observed 
with his usual accuracy that the custom of mixing comic 
scenes with tragic had infected the English theatre 
from the Spanish. All that Marmontel had to do fur- 
ther was to assert that it had infected Shakespeare in 
particular. This dramatist, he conceded, stood still at 
the head of the English stage and was almost the only 
one who was fervently applauded. Such a condition of 
things, however, could not last always : for Marmontel's 
ignorance of the past gave him the usual further con- 
fidence possessed by this sort of ignorance in its capacity 
of foretelling the future. He felt equal to making the 
prediction that Shakespeare's manner would not con- 
tinue to be fully approved, even in his own country, 

336 



LETOURNEUR'S TRANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

save by the populace. The populace, he confessed, was 
powerful. The English had indeed got from France at 
the time of the Restoration a taste for propriety, for 
nature in its beauty. ^ To Moli^re, Racine, and Boileau 
they owed Wycherley, Congreve, Rochester, and Dryden. 
These poets of the second age had charmed the court 
of Charles II. 

In the general muddle of misinformation here con- 
veyed, it is perhaps not worth while to notice such 
insignificant details as that Congreve was only a boy 
in the reign of Charles II., and that Rochester never 
wrote a play which charmed any court, and the only 
original one imputed to him could never have charmed 
any one outside of a brotliel. These are the most venial 
of errors compared with what followed. The French 
have always been a gallant race, and their critics not 
unfrequently attack a literature they know nothing 
about with the same desperate hardihood with which 
their soldiers venture upon a redoubt, in utter indiffer- 
ence to the strength of its position or to the number of 
its defenders. Never was there a better illustration of 
this characteristic offered than in this instance by 
Marmontel. He gravely observed that while the most 
cultivated part of the English nation, in accord with 
the rest of Europe, admired the ingenious and decent 
comedy of Congreve, the popvdace, true to the traditions 
and feelings transmitted from former times, remained 
faithful to the earlier writers. It continued to applaud 
upon the theatre comedy that was coarse and obscene 
and tragedy that was but little better. 

1 La belle nature is Mannouterri phrase. 

22 337 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

Ordinarily the man who discourses upon topics he 
knows absolutely nothing about is likely to pay for it 
at some time a heavy penalty. But men are sometimes 
saved by their badness as well as by their goodness. 
Marmontel's ignorance is so very ignorant that it con- 
tributes to enjoyment. The very impudence of its 
falsities excites a sort of tender interest in the man. 
What Englishman could be vexed at an author who 
tells us in all seriousness that Congreve is a purer 
writer than Shakespeare ? Le Tourneur, however, was 
a good deal exasperated. He possessed unusual knowl- 
edge of English hterature for a Frenchman of that time. 
He exposed with some heat the absurdity of these 
assertions. He expressed himself as being in ignorance 
of any warrant Marmontel had for charges so thought- 
lessly hazarded — an ignorance in which we may be 
sure Marmontel himself fully participated. Fortunately, 
however, for the latter, he was not in a court of law, 
and was not obliged to confess publicly what he did 
not know. Le Tourneur repelled with a good deal of 
asperity the remark that represented Shakespeare as an 
author addicted to indecency and obscenity. He ob- 
served very justly that in spite of occasional coarse 
expressions he was a very pure writer, and had never 
been reckoned otherwise. There were in his plays no 
indelicate situations ; in the plays which the French 
critic had called decent, it seemed at times as if there 
were no other kind of situations. To praise by way 
of contrast with the Elizabethan drama the unbridled 
license which had turned the theatre of the Restoration 
into a school of debauchery, made it a practically in- 

338 



LETOURNEUR'S TRANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

soluble question whether Marmontel were more igno- 
rant of the earlier dramatists whom he censured or of 
the later ones whom he commended. 

After Le Tourneur had finished the examination of 
most of Marmontel's assertions there was very little 
left of that author. In truth, nonsense of the sort he 
had been venting would never have been hazarded by a 
man who had even a faint inkling of knowledge of what 
he was talking about. The critic, however, was not 
quite so successful when he came to Marmontel's re- 
marks upon the dropping of the grave-diggers' scene 
by Garrick in his alteration of ' Hamlet.' This proceed- 
ing had given unmixed joy to the men of the classical 
school in France. At last the Enoflish had begun to 
see the folly of their ways. At last the reign of puri- 
fied taste was to dawn on that benighted land. Reason 
was triumphing over that blind admiration which had 
led a whole nation to accept the faults of its greatest 
dramatist as beauties. " Every day," wrote Marmontel, 
" Shakespeare is abridged, is chastened. The celebrated 
Garrick has just cut out in his stage the grave-diggers' 
scene and nearly all the fifth act. Both play and author 
have been only the more applauded." There could be 
no denial of the fact of the excision, though the applause 
with wliich it had been greeted was of a piece with 
most of the other information which Marmontel chose 
to communicate from the inexhaustible store-house of 
his ignorance or invention. Le Tourneur tried to 
account for a procedure which could not be explained 
away. The principal cause he assigned was the necessity 
of cutting down the piece so as to fit it for representa- 

339 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

tion in the limited time allotted. It was a lame apology. 
He evidently felt it to be such ; for he ended by declar- 
ing that while at Garrick's theatre the play had been 
shortened, the multitude thronged to the other theatre, 
where ' Hamlet ' was performed in its entirety. Still, 
before his translation of Shakespeare was completed, 
Le Tourneur had the satisfaction of seeing the altera- 
tion, which Garrick had never dared to print, disdain- 
fully dropped from the stage where it had made its 
first appearance.^ 

The refutation of Marmontel was followed by an ac- 
count of the Stratford jubilee. This had been an under- 
takinsT of Garrick's devisingr. In 1758 the Rev. Francis 
Gastrell, who had come into the possession of New Place, 
had cut down the famous mulberry-tree which was tra- 
ditionally held to have been planted by Shakespeare's 
own hands. The interest inspired by it, with the con- 
sequent throng of visitors, had caused the clergyman 
much discomfort. Accordingly he took this means to 
relieve himself of the annoyance. If a nearly contempo- 
rary account can be trusted, the act produced an explo- 
sion of popular wrath. The reverend gentleman, no 
longer revered, found it desirable to hasten his departure 
from Stratford, and to make his absence permanent.^ 
Souvenirs of various kinds were fashioned from the 
wood of the sacred tree. Several years later the mayor, 
aldermen, and burgesses of Stratford elected Garrick an 

1 For a full account of Garrick's alteration of ' Hamlet ' and its 
fortunes, see the preceding volume of this series, ' Shakespeare as a 
Dramatic Artist,' pp. 161-173. 

" Victor's History of the Theatres of London from the year 1760, etc. 
London, 1771, vol. i. p. 201. 

340 



LETOURNEUR'S TRANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

honorary burgess of the corporation. In May, 1769, he 
was waited upon by the proper officers of the place and 
presented with its freedom. The parchment granting it 
was enclosed in a box of curious workmanship made out 
of the famous mulberry-tree and adorned with devices 
by an eminent carver of Birmingham. 

As a return for the honor done him, and with the 
intent of being of some service to the place, Garrick 
planned a jubilee to celebrate Shakespeare's memory. 
The original scheme was to have one every seven years. 
The first was to take place in September, 1769. After 
opening with the performance of an oratorio in the 
church, there was to follow a series of ceremonies of 
various kinds. These were to occupy three days. Mas- 
querades, assemblies, balls, races, processions, fire-works, 
the acting of a play were some of the festivities which 
were to add to the interest of the occasion. Extensive 
preparations were made for the various pageants. More 
than one hundred trees near Stratford were cut down to 
enlarge the prospect. A wooden amphitheatre in the form 
of an octagon was constructed on the banks of the Avon 
for the proper performance of certain functions. Arne 
composed music for the occasion ; Garrick wrote for it a 
jubilee-ode in honor of the poet, which he recited him- 
self. Everything was done by the actor that could be 
done by him to make the celebration a success. Unfor- 
tunately the weather was unpropitious, and few of the 
ceremonies could be carried out with the magnificence 
intended. Large sums had been spent in preparation for 
a great procession in which the persons composing it 
were to appear in the habits of various characters belong- 

341 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

ing to the Shakespearean drama. The rain compelled its 
abandonment, as well as of a number of other events of 
interest. Above all, the little town was in no position 
to deal adequately with the large croAvd which poured 
into it. Complaints of the extortion practised abounded 
on all sides. The inhabitants were described as looking 
upon the jubilee not so much as a celebration designed 
to honor the memory of their dead townsman as an op- 
portunity afforded them by Providence to fleece the visi- 
tors whom the lack of proper accommodations had placed 
at their mercy. 

The enemies of Garrick had from the outset been dis- 
posed to cast ridicule upon the undertaking. They 
naturally rejoiced in the misadventures attending it. 
The press swarmed with a whole series of publications in 
prose and verse, some burlesquing the jubilee and every- 
thing connected with it, some attacking and some defend- 
ing Garrick; for against him every charge had been 
brought which enmity and envy could inspire. Foote, 
always to be relied upon when ridicule assumed the 
nature of malignity, satirized the whole celebration in 
one of his comments upon the events of the day which 
he was in the habit of giving at the end of his pieces. 
He defined a jubilee at the close of a performance of his 
' Devil upon Two Sticks.' This play, brought out at the 
Haymarket the previous year, had been revived in Sep- 
tember, 1769. "A jubilee," he said, "as it hath lately 
appeared, is a public invitation, circulated and urged by 
puffing, to go without horses to an obscure borough with- 
out representatives, governed by a mayor and aldermen 
who are no magistrates, to celebrate a great poet whose 

342 



LETOURNEUWS TRANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

own works have made him immortal, by an ode without 
poetry, music without melody, dinner without victuals, 
and lodgings without beds; a masquerade where half 
the people appeared bare-faced, a horse-race up to the 
knees in water, fireworks extinguished as soon as they 
were lighted, and a gingerbread amphitheatre which, Uke 
a house of cards, tumbled to pieces as soon as it was 
finished." ' All this was essentially repeated with some 
added details in a farce printed after Garrick's death — 
it was never acted. In it he was represented as solilo- 
quizing in the future life about the personages of all 
classes who hatl thronged to this performance, and the 
reception they had met. " That jubilee," he is repre- 
sented as saying to himself, " to which lords and ladies, 
knights, squires, and justices of the peace, country lads 
and country lasses, authors and players, pimps, fiddlers, 
filles de joie and demi-reps, pickpockets, gamesters, jock- 
eys and sharpers, — all ran in crowds, at my sole invita- 
tion, to be lodged without beds, to be fed without 
victuals, to be wet to the skin in seeing a race that was 
never run, and in viewing a pageant which was never 
shown ; and all this to celebrate a poet whose works 
have made him immortal." ^ 

Even among Garrick's friends there had been a dispo- 
sition to treat the whole performance jocosely rather than 
seriously. The project of repeating it at regularly recur- 
ring intervals fell through, though there were citizens of 
Stratford who later were anxious to have it made an an- 



1 Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xxxix, p. 458, Sept., 1769. The pas- 
sage is not to be found m the published play. 

2 Garrick in the Shades, or a Peep into Elysium (1779), act ii, 

343 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

nual festival.^ But in those days of infrequent and 
incomplete communication no intimation of any disap- 
pointment in connection with it had reached foreign 
lands. In them were repeated none of the contemptuous 
epithets applied to it in England. Continental Europe 
did not hear the criticism, the disparagement, the impu- 
tation of personal motives. It was the great central fact 
of the jubilee itself that arrested its attention and dazzled 
its eyes. Here, as it seemed, was a whole nation rising 
up as one man to honor an author who had been in his 
grave for more than one hundred and fifty years. He 
had owed nothing to the accident of birth. He had 
belonged to no illustrious class. He had not added 
wealth or power to his country's resources. He had been 
the member of a despised profession. Yet a tribute 
which kings would have been proud to receive and had 
never been able to secure had been awarded him by the 
grateful acclamations of a whole people. For three days 
a great festival had been celebrated with pomp and cere- 
mony and at vast expense in his honor. It was made 
more emphatic by the then professed intention to repeat 
it, if not every year, at least every seven years. 

Such a tribute naturally struck the imagination of 
foreigners. Le Tourneur made the most of it. He gave 
a glowing account of the festival. He described it as 
the most remarkable event which the annals of the theatre 
recorded, since dramatic poetry had flourished in modern 
Europe. In so speaking of it he was doing nothing more 
than reflect the general sentiment of the Continent ; in- 
deed he was repeating what had been said by English 

1 Garrick Correspondence, toI. i. p. 414. 
344 



LETOURNEUR'S TRANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

writers themselves. It necessarily tended to make the 
minds of men somewhat doubtful of the opinion in regard 
to Shakespeare which Voltaire had so frequently and so 
magisterially pronounced. The old feeling, to which he 
had himself been the first to give utterance, came once 
more to the Hps of many, but now with an expressed ref- 
erence to his later views. Could a whole nation unite in 
paying this tribute of honor to a writer long dead who 
had been represented to them as merely a barbarian with 
occasional flashes of genius ? Could a reputation which 
inspired such a ceremonial more than two hundred years 
after the author's birth be founded upon bad taste and 
imperfect judgment? The celebration set Europe to 
thinking. 

In one way it affected Voltaire himself. Long before, 
he had been impressed with the respect which waited in 
England upon those belonging to the actor's profession. 
He had been struck not so much by the admiration which 
followed them while living, as by the honors paid them 
after death. In France on the contrary, they were denied 
burial in consecrated ground, and were even in danger of 
ha\dng their dead bodies thrust into the common sewers. 
The court demanded of the players that they should act ; 
the church damned them for acting. Voltaire was never 
weary of contrasting the different treatment awarded 
them in the two countries. A little more than a year 
after he had left Protestant England the celebrated 
actress, Mrs. Oldfield, had been buried in Westminster 
Abbey. Her body had lain in state near by in the Jeru- 
salem chamber. Men high in social position had been 
the pall-bearers at her funeral. In Catholic France, but a 

345 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

few months before, had died suddenly the young, the bril- 
liant, the beautiful Adrienne Lecouvreur, the idol of 
Parisian theatre-goers. She had been buried like a dog 
in a waste place, secretly and at night. No funeral rites 
were celebrated over her remains, no stone had risen over 
the spot where her body lay. The place was left un- 
marked and unenclosed. Voltaire never ceased to feel 
bitterly over the different treatment bestowed upon the 
two actresses, ahke beautiful, alike gifted, and alike 
frail. 

It was natural that this new tribute to a man who 
had been an actor as well as a dramatist should impress 
him profoundly. Years after, he referred to it in one of 
the opening sentences of the discourse upon Shakespeare 
sent to the French Academy. At the time itself he 
mentioned it in a letter belonging to the very month in 
which the Stratford celebration took place. It is written 
with even more than his usual delightful inaccuracy. 
There is hardly a sentence in it which misses its op- 
portunity to embody some blunder in the statement of 
facts. But for all that the feeling it expressed was 
deep and genuine. He commented on the low position 
of the actor in France. " The English," he wrote, " have 
given us a hundred years ago another example. They 
have erected in the cathedral of Stratford a magnificent 
monument to Shakespeare, who, however, is not at all 
comparable to Moli^re, either for art or for the repre- 
sentation of manners. You are not ignorant of the fact 
that they are about to establish a kind of secular games 
in honor of Shakespeare in England. They are to be 
celebrated with extreme magnificence. They have had, 

346 



LETOURNEUR'S TRANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

it is said, tables for a thousand persons. The expense 
which has been incurred at the festival would enrich 
the whole French Parnassus. It seems to me that 
genius is not encouraged in France with any such pro- 
fusion." 1 

Le Tourneur followed his account of the jubilee with 
a life of Shakespeare. In it occurred several passages 
which disgusted the classicists even more than the 
Epistle to the King ; they put Voltaire beside himself 
with rage. They ran counter to all the opinions he had 
been promulgating ever since his return from England. 
One observation in particular he could never forgive. 
Le Tourneur said that, at a time when the Italians were 
corrupted by bad taste, listening to puerile conceits, and 
disdaining everything natural, when France took de- 
light in mystery-plays and similar farcical productions, 
to the scandal of taste, Shakespeare had revived in Eng- 
land the art of Plautus and Sophocles, dead for two 
thousand years. Rather he had created it, so that it de- 
served to be called the art of Shakespeare as well as that 
of Sophocles. Furthermore he directly controverted the 
patronizing view which Voltaire had constantly put 
forth, that the dramatist would have done much better 
if he had only had the good fortune to Uve in the days 
of Addison. The exact contrary was the truth. Had 
he come later he would not have done so well. He 
would have found in existence a well-worn road over 
which he would have been compelled to travel. His 
originality would have been destroyed. He would have 
been forced into involuntary imitation. His steps would 

1 Letter to M. de Chamfort, Sept. 27, 1769. 
347 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

have been impeded by a multitude of obstructions which 
would have hindered the freedom of his movements. He 
would have been subjected to a mass of rules forbidding 
him to do this, compelling him to do that. If he should 
have ventured to disregard them, the fine wits, like so 
many gibbering ghosts, would have encircled and as- 
sailed on every side the daring explorer of new dramatic 
worlds. He closed this portion of his eulogy with a ref- 
erence to those cold and pusillanimous critics who, meas- 
uring nature with insufficient rules, find gigantesque its 
noble and majestic proportions, and in order to regard 
them as beautiful, would reduce them so as to agree with 
the petty ideas which they themselves had formed. 

This was certainly throwing down the gauntlet with a 
vengeance. Le Tourneur did not pretend that he had 
any particular person or persons in mind in writing such 
words as these. But the opinions he controverted were 
the ones which Voltaire had taught his disciples. His 
sayings they parroted, his criticisms they repeated, his 
conclusions they set down as absolutely irrefutable. 
Throughout the whole prefatory matter there were fre- 
quent passages which treated with scant respect all the 
views which he had been proclaiming for years as being 
of the nature of axiomatic truths. Shakespeare's intro- 
duction of the representatives of every class on the stage 
was defended. All these offensive views were put even 
more offensively in the discourse which followed the life. 
This purported to be made up of selections from the 
various prefaces of the English editors of Shakespeare : 
Rowe, Pope, Warburton, Theobald, Hanmer, Johnson, 
Sewell, and others who were included under a compre- 

348 



LETOURNEUR'S TRANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

hensive " &c." The passages purporting to be taken 
from these writers were woven together without distinc- 
tion so as to form a continuous criticism. Le Tourneur 
pretended to add only some ideas of his own, some 
phrases necessary to the development and connection 
of these scattered parts. It was a device worthy of 
Voltaire himself. Under the shelter of these English 
names the translator could securely proclaim the supe- 
riority of Shakespeare to all other writers. He could 
with impunity direct his censures against the most 
cherished doctrines of the classicists. 

The opportunity was fully improved. No heretical 
utterances of Voltaire about religion were so adapted to 
shock the devout as those expressed here about the Eng- 
lish poet were calculated to horrify the devotees of 
the French drama. Even Mercier was outdone. Never 
in fact had audacity been more audacious. If Shake- 
speare's course, we were told, was contrary to the pre- 
cepts of Aristotle, it is certain that Aristotle himself 
would have modified his precepts and ordained other 
rules, had Shakespeare been a resident of Athens and 
introduced upon the scene representations grander and 
vaster than those of Sophocles and Euripides. Further, 
it was nothing but an abuse of criticism to proscribe one 
form of the drama and to hold up another as peculiarly 
sacred. Superstition which had deferred to laws im- 
posed by mere authority should be shaken oif. From 
them an appeal should be made to the laws of nature. 
Le Tourneur indeed raged without restraint through 
this portion of the prefatory matter. Several of the pas- 
sages in it were taken bodily, it is true, from the pref- 

349 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

aces of the English editors. For instance, Johnson's 
attack upon the doctrine of the unities was pretty fully 
given. But there was a good deal that was suggested 
by what he found, rather than translated from it. There 
was even more which the investigator will search for in 
vain in the writings of any English author. For that 
the utterances of Voltaire and his disciples were too 
often in the translator's thoughts. Care in fact was 
taken to point out the inferiority of the much lauded 
'Cato' of Addison. It may be added that Le Tour- 
neur in this discourse introduced, as he said, into the 
language the English word "romantic," which was 
in no short time to become the designation of a party. 
He appended a note defining its meaning, and distin- 
guishing it from romanesque and pittoresque} 

Furthermore the conclusion of the prefatory matter 
might be construed into additional cause of offence. 
Objections to the undertaking, Le Tourneur said, had 
been made both by Englishmen and Frenchmen. Those 
urged by the former hardly concern us here. But the 
objections of the latter were of two kinds, and the 
translator's reply to them involved a reflection upon 
the followers of Voltaire and upon the characterization 
of the English dramatist by Voltaire himself. At Paris, 
said Le Tourneur, " some thoughtless Aristarchs have 
already weighed in their limited balances the merits of 
Shakespeare. As he has never been translated and 
known in France, they know the precise sum of his 
beauties and defects. Without having read the poet, 
without understanding his language, they paint him in 

1 Page cxviii. 
350 



LETOURNEUR'S TRANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

one word as a savage." They conceded him, he went 
on to say, some happy and forcible lines, but he had 
nothing that was precious to offer to a delicate and 
refined people. These constituted one class of objectors 
to the translation. The other was made up of men filled 
with direful presentiments at the idea of introducing 
into France a nature so powerful as Shakespeare's. 
Monstrous spectacles would be exhibited on the French 
stage. Blood would flow. The dead would be buried, 
and atrocities of all sorts would be committed in the 
sight of the spectators. " Our great poets," these persons 
are represented as saying, " will be insulted by a foreign 
race, which confounds all species of composition, and 
will crush our masterpieces under the weight of its 
black and bizarre productions." 

Well might the classicists stand aghast at the open 
avowal of the heretical sentiments here given. Well 
might they consider views of this sort as being in the 
most atrociously bad taste. Many even of those who 
had originally favored the undertaking were a good deal 
shocked. Tremendous was the sensation this first in- 
stalment of the translation caused. Grimm, the chron- 
icler of the literary situation in Paris during these 
years, gives us an account of the varying views then 
and there entertained. It is all the more trustworthy, 
because he was not an extreme partisan of either side, 
though his sympathies lay mainly with the drama of 
the land in which he had come to live. In spite of the 
liberality of his views many of the sentiments found in 
this prefatory matter seemed to him shocking, when not 
in bad taste. He belonged to the second class which 

351 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

Le Tourneur had described, who feared that the French 
stage would be in danger of serious harm if the methods 
of the English were followed. It was not because he 
depreciated Shakespeare ; with his greatness he had 
been impressed far more than was ever Voltaire. And 
while he shared generally in the latter's feelings about 
the French theatre, unlike him he did not think it 
desirable that the English theatre should conform to it. 
In his eyes the stages of the two countries were rep- 
resentative of the races inhabiting them. What was 
befitting the one was therefore unsuited to the other. 
The English dramatists who had tried to adopt French 
methods had failed miserably. A like fate, in his opinion, 
would befall the French writers who sought to imitate 
Shakespeare.^ 

This was the harm which in Grimm's eyes could be 
and perhaps would be wrought by the translation. It 
might tempt young and ambitious authors into a field 
where they would meet only with disaster. What hope 
of success could they have if once they abandoned the 
pure and delicate taste which marked the productions of 
their own land ? They might try to imitate, but they 
could not expect to approach remotely the genius of 
Shakespeare, all-powerful in producing sublimity even 
when he put himself outside of the rules, and by the 
mere force of inspiration and imagination supported in 
his pieces what is most untrue to life and monstrous. 
" Who else than he," wrote Grimm, " can hope to pre- 
serve, as did he in those most vast and complicated com- 
positions, that marvellous hght which never ceases to 

1 Grimm's Correspondance litt&aire, tome ix. p. 21. 

352 



LETOURNEUR'S TRANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE 

illuminate the progress of the action, which bursts out, 
so to speak, of itself over all the parts of the subject ? 
Who can ever hope to flatter himself that he can sustain 
that great stock of interest which the author himseK 
seems to interrupt of his own accord, and is always sure 
to take up again with the same energy ? What genius 
has ever penetrated more profoundly into the character 
and all the passions of human nature ? " 

There was, as Grimm's words show, a sense of danger 
in the air. Naturally the translation, with the defiant 
utterances of its prefatory matter, aroused the passions 
of the partisans of both sides. It excited the interest 
even of those who were ignorant or indifferent. " It 
has been a long time," wrote Grimm, " since we have 
seen the appearance of any work which has deserved 
more censure and more eulogies, in regard to which 
there have been more keen disputes, and about which in 
fine, pubhc opinion has been more divided and un- 
certain. Those who, from having been brought up from 
infancy in the fear and respect of our great masters, 
render to them that exclusive and superstitious worship 
which differs in no respect from theological intolerance, 
have regarded the translators as sacrilegious wretches 
who wished to introduce into the country monsters and 
barbarous divinities. The devotees of Ferney have not 
been able to witness without a good deal of ill-humor a 
work which is about to instruct France as to that 
admirable skill with which M. de Voltaire has known 
how to appropriate to himself the beauties of Shake- 
speare, and the less admirable bad faith with which he 
has afterward permitted himself to translate him. Those 
23 353 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

who have desired to preserve an air of impartiality have 
rendered to the finest genius of England the justice due 
him, but they have revenged themselves upon his 
translator." ^ That indeed became the common method 
of compromise. Madame du Deffand, for instance, wrote 
to Walpole, that she was enchanted with ' Othello.' 
While she could not tell whether the translation was 
faithful or not, it seemed to her that Shakespeare could 
not have written better. On the other hand what the 
translators had written out of their own heads was 
insipid to the last degree. 

^ Grimm's Correspondance Utte'raire, tome ix. p. 15. 



354 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE WRATH OF VOLTAIRE 

Months seem to have passed before the two volumes 
of Le Tourneur's translation came into the hands of 
Voltaire. In his published correspondence the first 
letter in regard to it bears the date of the nineteenth 
of July. If all this time he was ignorant of what had 
occasioned so much discussion at Paris, the exchange 
of news that took place between the French capital and 
Ferney must have been peculiarly imperfect and un- 
satisfactory. The subscription for the proposed trans- 
lation had in fact been going on since the early part of 
1775 ; and it is almost impossible to believe that some 
inkling of the nature of the undertaking had not reached 
his ears. There was so much finesse, not to call it 
trickery, in all of Voltaire's proceedings, that too much 
reliance need not be placed by the reader upon dates 
which the writer feels himself compelled to follow.^ 

In July certainly he had the two volumes, and had 
read the prefatory matter. His indignation was aroused 

^ In Grimm's Correspondance litte'raire, tome ix. p. 117 ff., under June, 
1776, several pages of the 'Letter to the French Academy,' read August 
25, are given: and Voltaire's letter to D'Argeutal, dated July 19, iu 
Voltaire's Correspondence, is spoken of as having been forwarded the 
preceding month. I am unable to explain the discrepancy in the dates, 
save on the theory that those in Grimm's Correspondence have been 
wrongly given. 

855 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

to the highest pitch by the dreadful sentiments there 
expressed. If these did not constitute an attack upon 
him personally, they certainly did upon the gospel 
which he had persistently preached. Here too were 
men, devoted followers of his own, who were held up to 
scorn for their inability to comprehend the proportions 
of the colossal figure wliich it was beyond their power 
to measure. But in addition to the atrocious doctrines 
which he found energetically proclaimed, there was 
something of far greater importance in his eyes which 
he did not find. In those scores of pages dealing with 
the drama not once had the name of Voltaire been 
mentioned. Not a word had been said of the true 
successor of Corneille and Racine. Not an allusion 
even had there been to the greatest living man of letters, 
whose fame filled all Europe, unless the contradiction 
of the views he cherished and loudly proclaimed could 
be so construed. The offence was unpardonable. It is 
true that Voltaire's name had strictly no business in 
the work. The translator was not writing about the 
French stage but about the English. He was not ex- 
patiating on the living, but on the dead. Nor could he 
well have referred to Voltaire personally without con- 
trasting the attitude of persistent depreciation which 
he had now assumed, with his early recognition, im- 
perfect as it was, of the genius of Shakespeare. But to 
any considerations of this sort the great French author 
was insensible. To write anything about the stage and 
fail to mention its most conspicuous living ornament 
was an offence which his insatiable vanity could not 
forgive. So blinded was he by his fury that he suc- 

356 



THE WRATH OF VOLTAIRE 

ceeded at first in overlooking any reference whatever to 
Corneille and Racine also. It was one of the grievances 
he originally put forth against this translation that 
their names had never been mentioned even once. He 
spoke of them ; he was thinking of himself. 

But there were particular observations scattered up 
and down the prefatory matter which filled him with 
special wrath. Here was a work which told Frenchmen 
that Shakespeare had never been rendered into their 
tongue at all. Ridiculous travesties existed, but no 
translation. Accordingly he was actually unknown to 
those who made him the subject of disparaging criticism. 
The positive crime of this assertion was almost as bad in 
Voltaire's eyes as the negative one of omitting to men- 
tion his own name. Was it not he who had brought this 
monstrous author to the knowledge of his countrymen ? 
Had he not, nearly half a century before, furnished them 
with a version of the monologue of Hamlet ? Had he 
not since translated the three acts of ' Juhus Cffisar,' 
word for word, line for line ? Had lie not given a de- 
scription of two or three of Shakespeare's most renowned 
plays, and thereby enabled all men to judge of these 
pieces ? Had he not indicated the exact degree to which 
he was to be admired ? All these services in behalf of 
the living and the dead were now ignored. The adorers 
of the new divinity had forgotten to recognize the debt 
they owed to the man who had introduced him to their 
worship. For a long time past they had been restrained 
with difficulty from passing the critical bounds he had 
set up ; some there were who had had the audacity to 
treat with derision their sacred character. But this 

357 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

latest departure exceeded all precedent. A translation 
had come out which spoke with contempt of the petty 
critics of Paris who knew nothing of Shakespeare of 
their own knowledge and contented themselves with 
echoing the opinions of those who were incompetent to 
form any opinions worth heeding. In fine, the French 
people had been told that Shakespeare was " the creator 
god of the sublime dramatic art, which had received from 
him its existence and perfection." ^ Voltaire was angered 
to the depths of his soul. 

We come now to one of the most extraordinary epi- 
sodes in a life full of extraordinary passages. The state of 
mind the perusal of this prefatory matter produced in 
Voltaire would hardly be credited, did not his own letters 
survive to prove it. He fairly foamed at the mouth with 
rage. One could almost fancy that Shakespeare himself 
had somehow done him a gross personal injury. The far- 
cical nature of the performance in which he was soon en- 
gaged occasionally came over him at first, and he tried to 
laugh about it. But it was too serious in his eyes to be 
long treated with levity. The ' Letter to the French Acad- 
emy,' the pubUc outcome of it all, was made compara- 
tively tame to suit the decorum of the dignified body to 
which it was addressed. But in his private correspond- 
ence he gave full vent to his wrath. The spectacle he 
was now about to exhibit can bring delight only to those 
who witness with pleasure the weaknesses of a great 
spirit. Never did offended vanity, masking under the 

^ Voltaire, in a note to the ' Letter to the French Academy/ quotes this 
passage from " Page 3 du programme." It is not in the preface to the 
translation. 

358 



THE WRATH OF VOLTAIRE 

guise of love of country and of devotion to the cause of 
taste, exhibit itself in a more outrageous form. Never 
did it conduct its operations after a more unscrupulous 
and discreditable fashion. The paroxysm lasted in its 
full fury between three and four months ; but the dis- 
ease of which it was a manifestation ended only with 
Voltaire's life. 

In the first transports of his indignation he dashed off 
a letter to his faithful friend, D'Argental. To the author 
of the translation he applied a number of abusive terms. 
In fact he never spoke of him afterwards without indulg- 
ing in the choicest billingsgate at his command. He 
never once referred to his two coadjutors. All his invec- 
tives were reserved for Le Tourneur alone. The slight- 
est suggestion of his name or work was the signal 
henceforth for Voltaire, either in conversation or in corre- 
spondence, to go off into a wild orgy of abusive epithets. 
It was in the following way he burst out in the letter 
previously mentioned, which bears the date of July 19, 
1776: 

'•' I must tell you how much I am angry, for the honor of 
the theatre, at a man named Tourneur, who is called secre- 
tary of the booksellers and who does not appear to me to be 
the secretary of good taste. Have you read two volumes of 
this wretch, in which he wishes to make us look upon Shake- 
speare as the only model of genuine tragedy ? He calls 
him the god of the theatre. He sacrifices all the French 
without exception to his idol, as formerly pigs were sacri- 
ficed to Ceres. He does not even condescend to mention 
Corneille and Racine. These two great men are simply en- 
veloped iu the general proscription, without having even 

359 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

their names spoken. There are two volumes printed of this 
Shakespeare, which would be taken for pieces to be played 
at the fair and composed about two hundred years ago. 
This scribbler has found the secret of engaging the king, 
the queen, and all the royal family to subscribe to his 
work. Have you read his abominable balderdash,^ of 
which there are to be five volumes more ? Have you a 
sufficiently vigorous detestation of this impudent blockhead? 
Will you put up with the affront which he has offered to 
France? There are not in France raps on the knuckles 
enough, foolscaps enough, pillories enough for such a charla- 
tan ! "^ The blood boils in my old veins in talking to you of 
him. If he has not made you angry, I hold you a man 
incapable of wrath. That which is frightful is that the 
monster has a party in France ; and to fill up the measure 
of the calamity and horror, it is I who long ago was the 
first to speak of this Shakespeare. It is I who was the 
first to show the French some pearls which I had found in 
his enormous dunghill. I did not then expect that one day 
I should contribute to trample under foot the crowns of 
Corneille and Eacine in order to adorn the brow of a barba- 
rian stage-player." 

The letter was a manifesto announcing hostilities. It 
was designed to be made public ; and it was accordingly 
made public. Copies of it were speedily circulated 
throughout Paris. It was carried to England; and a 
few months later a translation of it appeared in the Eng- 
lish papers. But Voltaire had no idea of resting content 
with any mere outburst of momentary indignation. He 
contemplated a more systematic and effective attack upon 

1 Grimoire. 2 Faqxiin. 

360 



THE WRATH OF VOLTAIRE 

this Shakespeare propaganda which had shamelessly in- 
truded itself into the very citadel of true art. He had 
determined to declare war against the translator and the 
translation. This seemed somewhat petty. He dignified 
it in his own thoughts, and tried to dignify it to others 
— to some extent he succeeded — by calling it a war 
against England. He sought to make it an international 
question. He was fighting, he said, for the honor of his 
own land. He was pleading the cause of Corneille and 
Racine, that is, of good taste, against the advance of that 
barbarism which was aiming to defile the beauty and the 
majesty of the French stage. For this purpose he wished 
to secure to his support the influence of the French 
Academy. With that end in view he began operations 
at once. He prepared a letter to that body with the 
design of exposing the barbarousness of the much ex- 
tolled Shakespeare. 

The ' Letter,' as found in his works, did not, in all 
probability, differ materially from what it was when first 
written. There was nothing new in it in the way of 
criticism, nothing which Voltaire had not already said 
before, and in some instances had said many times. It 
was enriched, however, with some additional illustrations 
of ignorance which vaunted itself as exceeding knowl- 
edge. One of the most striking of these has been given 
earlier.^ But there were a number of others. Two, in 
particular, deserve mention, because they confirm the 
impression that there was no recklessness of assertion on 
any point about which he knew little or nothing, of 
which Voltaire was not capable, if he thought it would 

^ See the account of ' Gorboduc,' pp. 35-40. 

361 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

help the side he was advocating. He gravely informed 
his readers that almost all the words of the English lan- 
guage were derived from the French. He communi- 
cated the hitherto unsuspected and still undiscovered 
information that in the time of Henry VII. a permanent 
theatre had been established in London, which was still 
subsisting. This may be defended on the ground that 
evil was done in order that good might result. By a 
false statement of fact he was helping to destroy a false 
belief that Shakespeare was the creator of the English 
stage. These, however, are mere incidental inaccuracies. 
The discourse collects in an impressive whole the errors 
of all sorts which had been scattered through his numer- 
ous treatises. As now printed, it is divided into two 
parts. The first consisted mainly of an attack upon Le 
Tourneur. But he was not mentioned by name. He 
appears simply as the translator. The second was rather 
a consideration of the general subject of the theatre, in 
the course of which Voltaire sought to explain how it 
came about that Shakespeare wrote in the manner he 
did and gained the reputation he had. 

Of course he could not refrain from venting his own 
grievances. He told the members of the assembled Acad- 
emy, as he had been telling everybody else for years, 
that a man of letters, one of their own number, had been 
the first to introduce into France the knowledge of the 
English dramatist, as well as of several other English 
authors. He had sought to add to French literature 
some of the excellences in which English literature ex- 
celled. For this he had been persecuted at the time. 
He had been reproached with want of patriotism. But 

362 



THE WRATH OF VOLTAIRE 

now his eovintrymen had gone to the other extreme and 
cared for little else than that which they had once con- 
temned. It was implied, though not asserted, that it 
was Voltaire alone who had preserved that golden mean 
between extremes which is as much the characteristic of 
intellectual as of moral virtue. The charge made by 
Le Tourneur in his preface that Shakespeare was un- 
known in France, or rather disfigured, filled him with 
wrath. Voltaire had in the highest degree the courage 
of his mendacities, nor did he flinch on this occasion 
from repeating his fraudulent declaration that never 
had there been so faithful a translation as his of ' Julius 
Csesar.' He had rendered everything with scrupulous 
care, words, lines, figures, spirit. If Le Tourneur re- 
proached France for not having an exact translation of 
Shakespeare, all the more incumbent was it upon him 
to translate him exactly. But this he had not done. 
He had indeed brought upon the stage the artisans 
in ' Julius Csesar ; ' but he had not rendered the quib- 
bles found in the speeches which the shoemaker ad- 
dressed to the tribunes. It made no difference to the 
now highly developed conscientiousness of the critic 
that this feat could not well be accomplished in a 
foreign tongue. Le Tourneur had proclaimed Shake- 
speare the creator god of the theatre. To withhold any- 
thing which he had said was therefore committing sacri- 
lege against his divinity. 

Voltaire also resorted to his now well-worn device of 
selecting passages from Shakespeare which he fancied 
would be peculiarly offensive to his hearers. If there 
was anything exceedingly plain-spoken or indecent in 

363 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

the original of these, he contrived, whenever possible, 
to heighten this characteristic in his version. In one in- 
stance, where he contributed additional coarseness to a 
phrase in the porter's speech in 'Macbeth,' he appended 
in the published ' Letter ' an apologetic note, not to de- 
fend his own conduct, but to assail his author's. It was 
to the effect that he asked pardon of cultivated readers, 
and especially of the ladies, for the faithfulness of his 
translation. He had, however, been compelled to ex- 
pose the infamy with which certain Velches had desired 
to cover France. With this same noble object in view 
he had chosen for translation part of the opening scenes 
of ' Othello,' of ' Romeo and Juliet,' and of ' Lear.' 
He rendered also a few sentences of the conversation 
between Henry V. and the French king's daughter, and 
of the porter's speech in ' Macbeth.' None of these scenes 
were given in full ; only so much was selected as con- 
tained some coarse word or allusion, or some expression 
the utterance of which under the circumstances would 
be apt to strike his countrymen as inappropriate or un- 
dignified. And not only did he give but a small part of 
the conversation, he sought to create the belief that what 
he left untranslated was much worse than what he trans- 
lated. Take as one illustration out of many, his treat- 
ment of the opening scene in ' Romeo and Juliet. ' He 
introduced it with the avowed object of comparing it 
with an admired passage in Racine's Bajazet. Let us 
not linger over the thorough dishonesty of a comparison 
of this sort. He translated so much of the conversation 
that went on between the two servants of the house of 
Montague as would serve his purpose. When he reached 

361 



THE WRATH OF VOLTAIRE 

the part that was inoffensive he carefully stopped with 
the remark that respect and politeness did not permit 
him to go farther. It is performances of this sort which 
awaken disagreeable feelings in him most inclined to ad- 
mire Voltaire ; for morally they are far more debasing 
than the coarsest phrase or vilest allusion that can be 
found anywhere in Shakespeare. 

It is obvious indeed that not a single one of the pas- 
sages inserted by Voltaire in this ' Letter,' whether re- 
garded as appropriate or not to the character who spoke 
it, would ever have been selected by any one as a speci- 
men of the genius of the English dramatist. They had 
been laboriously culled out of his works for no other 
reason than that they expressed or suggested what would 
be repulsive. Voltaire had made as careful a choice as 
he could, not merely of passages which would be offen- 
sive to French taste, but of passages containing phrases 
which would be offensive to the taste of everybody. He 
as carefully neglected to give anything which would 
furnish any manifestation of Shakespeare's genius at its 
best ; or if he did, his version was of a nature to arouse 
quite other ideas in the minds of his readers than those 
which the original would inspire. He likewise repeated 
in briefer terms his account of portions of ' Hamlet.' In 
so doing he called attention to the anachronisms found 
in that play, to its mixture of low scenes with tragic, to 
its disregard of the unities of time and place. He ended 
up his discourse with asking his audience to picture in 
their minds Louis XIV. at Versailles, surrounded by his 
brilliant court. Into the midst of the heroes, the great 
men, the beautiful women who composed that assem- 

365 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

blage plunges a buffoon covered with tatters. This is Le 
Tourneur. He proposes to them to abandon Corneille, 
Racine, and Moliere for a mountebank — this is Shake- 
speare — who has exhibited some happy sallies of wit 
and makes some contortions. " How do ^on believe," 
he asked, " that proposition would be received ? " So 
much for the buffoon translator and the mountebank 
who had been translated. At the end of the first part 
he remarked with satisfaction that the sentiments to 
which he had given expression had also found utterance 
among English men of letters. They had been made 
by Rymer himself, even the savant Rymer. It was his 
reliance upon this most ignorant as well as most wretched 
of critics that had led him into his blundering account 
of 'Gorboduc' He quoted, however, with unction his 
words in which Shakespeare had been spoken of as in- 
ferior in taste to a pug of Barbary.' It was conse- 
quently with pride that Voltaire pointed to his own 
finer impartiality of judgment, unmoved either by the 
extravagance of depreciation or the extravagance of 
admiration. "Permit me, gentlemen," he concluded 
this part of his ' Letter,' " to take a middle course be- 
tween Rymer and the translator of Shakespeare ; and 
to regard this Shakespeare neither as a god nor as a 
monkey." 

Such is largely the ' Letter ' which Voltaire called a 
faithful exposition of the merits of Shakespeare as con- 
trasted with those of French dramatic poetry. No sooner 
was it finished than he set about summoning his adhe- 
rents to his assistance in this new crusade. He forwarded 

1 Rymer's Short View of Tragedy (1693), p. 124. See page 39. 
366 



THE WRATH OF VOLTAIRE 

it at once to his intimate friend D'Alembert. Him he 
addressed as secretary of good taste even more than as 
secretary of the Academy. "Come to my rescue," he 
wrote. " Read my statement of the case against our 
enemy." The enemy here referred to was not Shake- 
speare but Shakespeare's translator. He desired D'Alem- 
bert to show to Marmontel and to La Harpe what he had 
transmitted. He asked his help against those who were 
striving to make his countrymen too English. He asked 
it because he was pleading for France against England. 
The nature of the aid he coveted was intimated rather 
than expressed. What Voltaire was seeking was the 
support of the Academy. It had been of great service 
to him in the publication of his ' Commentaries on Cor- 
neille.' His aim now was to secure its aid in what he 
chose to call a war against England. What he there- 
fore desired in this instance was an official letter from 
D'Alembert as secretary, so that the attack on the trans- 
lation should seem to have, if it did not actually have 
the sanction of the Academy.^ 

Before D'Alembert had had time to reply, the actor 
Le Kain had arrived at Ferney. He brought with him 
bad news. His report made all the deeper impression 
because he was as full of anger as his host. To the latter 
he announced that almost all the young people of Paris 
were on the side of Le Tourneur. The new generation 
was crying up Shakespeare. As expressed in Voltaire's 
language, the English boards and the English brothels 
were prevailing over the dramas of Racine and the beau- 
tiful scenes of Corneille. In Paris there was nothing 

1 Letter to D'Alembert, July 26, 1776. 

367 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

grander and more decent than the buffoonery of the 
London stage. Voltaire's mind was full of the gloomiest 
forebodings. D'Argental had written him a letter sym- 
pathizing with his indignation. It is not unlikely that 
this nobleman, horrified by Le Tourneur's preface, had 
withdrawn his subscription ; for his name appears on the 
first list. A single fact of that nature would enable 
Voltaire, with his magnificent powers of generalization, 
to assert, as he did a little later, that all respectable persons 
were withdrawing their support from the enterprise. To 
this old friend he poured forth the deep sorrows of his 
soul. " The abomination of desolation," he wrote, "is in 
the temple of the Lord. ... I have seen the end of the 
reign of reason and good taste. I am going to die, leav- 
ing France barbarous. But happily you live, and I flat- 
ter myself that the queen will not leave her new country, 
of which she constitutes the charm, a prey to savages 
and monsters. I flatter myself that Marshal Duras will 
not have done the Academy the honor of belonging to it 
in order to see us devoured by the Hottentots. I have 
sometimes complained of the Velches; but I have de- 
sired to avenge France before I die." 

He was going, he said, to make a fight for his country. 
He went on to tell his correspondent of the discourse he 
had prepared on Shakespeare — now in the hands of 
D'Alembert — and of his hopes and wishes in regard to 
its pubhcation. In it he had striven to suppress his 
grief, in order to let only his reason speak. He was not 
disposed to have it printed, unless the Academy gave it 
an authorized approval. Such was not its usage. But 
he thought that body might break for once over its rules. 

368 



THE WRATH OF VOLTAIRE 

The occasion was one of unusual seriousness, and nice 
customs should give way to stern necessities. An official 
approval would be of the nature of a decree against the 
progress of barbarism. He concluded his letter as if he 
were about to march to the stake or mount the scaffold 
in all the majesty of conscious martyrdom. " I know," he 
said, " that I sliall make for myself cruel enemies ; but 
some day, perhaps, tlie nation will be glad that I sacri- 
ficed m3^self for her sake." ^ That time has never come. 
France has never denied Voltaire's intellectual greatness, 
however diverse have been the views taken of his char- 
acter. As represented bj^some, she has looked upon him 
as little other than a jesting monkey possessed of genius ; 
as represented by othei'S, as not merely a genius, but as 
a valiant soldier fighting for the reign of justice, good- 
will, and truth on earth. Further than this she has de- 
clined to go. She has found as insuperable difficulties in 
enrolling him in the company of the martyrs as in that 
of the saints. 

D'Alembert in the meanwhile fell readily in with the 
objects aimed at by his friend, so far as they could be 
carried out. At a private meeting of the Academy, held 
on the 3d of August, the letter of Voltaire was read. 
On the following day D'Alembert, as secretary, wrote to 
the author that his remarks on Shakespeare appeared to 
the members so interesting, as regarded literature in gen- 
eral and French literature in particular, so useful above 
all for the maintenance of good taste, that it was felt to 
be desirable that the public should have the pleasure of 
listening to his production. Accordingly they desired 

1 Letter to D'Argeutal, July 30, 1776. 
24 369 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

his permission to read it again at the open meeting of 
the 25th of August. It was then that prizes were to be 
distributed.^ This particular method of bringing the 
' Letter ' before the public seems to have been the ex- 
pedient of Voltaire's partisans, rather than of Voltaire 
himself ; but it had something of the effect of giving it 
what he ardently desired, a sort of official sanction. Mrs. 
Montagu, indeed, subsequently wrote to Garrick that it 
was much against the inclination of all but three or four 
members of the Academy that the paper was read.^ This 
statement bears its refutation on its face. There was 
pretty surely a minority opposed to the action and per- 
haps a strong minority ; but it could hardly have failed 
to receive the willing assent of the majority. 

The plan of reading it on this occasion was of course 
based upon the supposition that the author could be in- 
duced to give his consent. The solemn farce of begging 
Voltaire to comply with a request to do something he 
was longing to have done, D'Alembert went through 
with imperturbable gravity. But he added certain con- 
ditions imposed by the Academy. Voltaire, in his first 
letter on the subject to his friend, had recognized the 
necessity of refraining from all undue manifestations of 
wrath when setting out to plead before a judicial body. 
In this first draft he had not sufficiently restrained his 
anger. He was told that the discourse could not be read 
in pubhc in the condition it was. The name of the 
translator attacked must be suppressed; in fact, there 

1 Letter of D'Alembert to "Voltaire, Aug. 4, 1776. 

2 Letter to Garrick from Sandelford, Nov. 3, 1776. Garrick Corre- 
spondence, vol. ii. page 188. 

370 



THE WRATH OF VOLTAIRE 

were three of tliem, and not one alone. Everything 
indeed which had the appearance of offensive personality 
must go. But besides this there were passages quoted 
from Shakespeare too outspoken to be hazarded in a pub- 
lic assembly. These must be cut out. 

To the official communication to his dear and illustri- 
ous confrere which D'Alembert sent as perpetual secre- 
tary of the Academy, he added a personal postscript of 
his OAvn to his dear master. He was desirous that the 
' Letter ' should be read as a sort of protest against the 
bad taste which a certain class of men of letters were 
striving to bring into vogue. It was therefore important 
that for the coarse speeches, unreadable in public, other 
passages should be substituted, which would be equally 
ridiculous but also readable. These of course could be 
easily found. So thought D'Alembert, whose knowledge 
of Shakespeare was in an inverse ratio to his knowledge 
of mathematics. Accordingly he asked Voltaire to send 
on these additional citations. He would charge himself 
with the easy task of cutting out the objectionable pas- 
sages. But time was pressing. Whatever was done 
must be done quickly.^ 

Two replies came from Voltaire, one following three 
days after the other.^ He consented to sacrifice the 
name of Le Tourneur. Still, he gave his correspondent 
to understand that tliis reprobate, though not to be men- 
tioned, was the one in fact who was solely responsible 
for the preface — that abominable preface in which 
Shakespeare had been elevated to the throne of dramatic 

1 D'Alembert to Voltaire, August 4, 1776. 

2 Voltaire to D'Alembert; letters of August 10 and 13. 

371 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

art, and in which by some oversight the name of Vol- 
taire did not chance to appear. He it was who in this 
introductory matter had insulted the French writers 
with all the insolence of a pedant ruling over school- 
boys. He was as impertinent as he was tedious. With 
that affluence of imagination or parsimony of truth — 
according as one is disposed to look at it — which char- 
acterized Voltaire in his controversies, he added that he 
had been overwhelmed by letters from Paris on this 
subject ; that all decent people were irritated against the 
translator; that several had withdrawn their subscrip- 
tions. It was expedient, he continued, that men should 
put in the pillory of Parnassus this rascal of a Le Tour- 
neur, who in the tone of a master, gives us English 
buffoons to set up in the place of Corneille and Racine ; 
who treats us as everybody ought to treat him. Still, he 
was perfectly willing to let his villanous name go un- 
mentioned. 

It was different, however, with the passages which 
had been selected. Voltaire was aware, as D'Alembert 
was not, that it was no easy matter to find others as 
suitable for his purpose. He had carefully culled 
out from the mass of Shakespeare's writings everything he 
knew which would be offensive to his audience. If these 
were thrown aside there were no others that could take 
their place and produce the effect he aimed at. Their 
retention was therefore all-important. These vulgarities, 
these coarse words and phrases must be made known. 
The public must be put in a position " to see the divine 
Shakespeare in all his abominableness and in all his 
incredible vileness." He suggested a way out of the 

372 



THE WRATH OF VOLTAIRE 

difficulty. D'Alembert, in reading, was to hesitate at 
these passages. He was to stop and apologize. He was 
to say that respect for the august assembly before which 
he stood would not permit him to repeat the offensive 
words and phrases he found in the extracts cited. An 
effective contrast would be thus brought out between 
the admirable pieces of Corneille and Racine and the 
terms of the market and the brothel which the divine 
Shakespeare had constantly put in the mouths of his 
heroes and heroines. " The great thing," he continued, 
" is to inspire the nation with the disgust and detestation 
it ought to have for buffoon Le Tourneur, extoller of 
buffoon Shakespeare ; to hold back our youth from the 
slough into which they are precipitating themselves ; 
to preserve a little our honor, if there is any remaining 
to us." Such were Voltaire's exhortations. The way to 
preserve the honor of French dramatists was to give an 
utterly false impression of the character of the writings 
of the English dramatist. " I am still persuaded," he 
wrote further, " that when you shall inform the Academy 
that you cannot pronounce at the Louvre what Shake- 
speare pronounced familiarly before Queen Elizabeth, 
the hearer, who will be glad of your reticence, will let 
his imagination run far beyond the English indecencies 
which will remain unuttered on the tip of your tongue." 
On this point he was specially urgent. It was the 
main subject of both his letters to D'Alembert. To 
reinforce his request he wrote to La Harpe, begging 
him to second his appeal. The same fiery earnestness, 
the same indefatigable activity which he had displayed 
in championing the cause of victims of persecution he 

373 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

now exhibited in behalf of his own wounded vanity, 
though he disguised it under the name of zeal for the 
reputation of French writers whom no one had attacked. 
He complimented La Harpe on the patriotic and meri- 
torious work which he and others had done in daring to 
defend in the Academy Sophocles and Corneille, Eurip- 
ides and Racine against Gilles Shakespeare and Pierrot 
Le Tourneur. The risk involved in this undertakingf 
will not be likely to strike the foreign reader as making 
a heavy demand upon the courage. In the way it was 
to be performed it involved, however, the necessity of 
doing a good deal of dirty work. Voltaire himself had 
no conception where the foulness really lay. He fancied 
it in Shakespeare, and not in himself and his associates. 
The filthiness of the contest was in his eyes equal to its 
desperate nature. " You will liave to wash your hands 
after that battle," he wrote, " for you will have fought 
with the night-scavengers. I never expected France to 
sink one day into this abyss of ordure into which it has 
plunged." 1 

In order, therefore, that France should be preserved 
from any further defilement, it was absolutely essential 
that coarse passages in the writings of the English dram- 
atist should be wrenched from their context and pre- 
sented as fair specimens of his general work. The helot 
Shakespeare must be seen in his drunkenness, to save 
the Spartan Parisian from similar degradation. This 
consideration Voltaire impressed strongly upon La 
Harpe. "My principal intention," he wrote, "and the 
true aim of my labors is to have the public fully 

» Letter of Aug. 15, 1776. 
374 



THE WRATH OF VOLTAIRE 

informed of tlie infamous vileness wliich men dare to 
oppose to the majesty of our stage. It is clear that 
one cannot gain tho knowledge of this baseness save by 
making a literal translation of the vulgar words of the 
delicate Shakespeare." It was true that D'Alembert 
could not disgrace himself by pronouncing aloud at the 
Louvre before the ladies coarse expressions which were 
spoken boldly every day in London, Still there was 
the expedient already indicated. He could stop as he 
reached them. By his very suppression of the proper 
word he would inform the audience that he did not 
dare ■ to translate the decent Shakespeare in all his 
native force. " I think," he added, " this reticence and 
this modesty will gratify the assembl}^ who will imagine 
much more mischief than can be spoken to them." ^ 

D'Alembert required no ui-ging. La Harpe's interces- 
sion was apparently not needed to induce him to carry 
out this peculiar method of sustaining the honor of the 
French stage. He put himself wholly at Voltaire's 
disposition. He assured him in his reply that his orders 
should be executed to the very letter. He had become 
infected with his friend's lunacy, and fancied that a 
translation of Shakespeare into French with a laudatory 
preface was a declaration of war between France and 
England. His reply is a singular illustration of the 
influence exerted by a man of genius. D'Alembert's 
self-love had not been wounded. He had no wrongs 
real or fancied to avenge. He was as innocent of any 
knowledge of Shakespeare as either La Harpe or 
Marmontel. Yet he could hardly have exhibited more 

1 Letter of Voltaire to La Harpe, August 15, 1776. 
375 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

enthusiasm if his own fortune and fame had been at 
stake. He repeated with docility all the phrases which 
Voltaire had taught him. It was a war between France 
and England. The day of the reading he spoke of as a 
day of battle, in which the French must endeavor not 
to be beaten as at Crecy and Poitiers. In the large 
language on this really petty matter which passed 
between two of the greatest men of Europe, the contest 
was to be a struggle to the death. " It is necessary," 
wrote D'Alembert, " that either Shakespeare or Racine 
remain upon the field. It is necessary to make these 
gloomy and insolent English see that our men of letters 
know how to fight against them better than do our 
soldiers and generals. I shall cry out on Sunday in 
rushing to the charge, Vive Saint- Denis- Voltaire, ct 
meure George-Shakespeare.'" ^ Since Don Quixote's en- 
counter with the windmills, literature has presented no 
contest of quite the same character. 

D'Alembert, however, repeated his warnings as to 
what could and what could not be done. He regretted 
that he would be compelled to leave out some of the 
passages which were peculiarly objectionable. But the 
printer could re-instate them. The wider world of 
readers would thereby be enabled to become familiar 
with them in all their foulness. Still, even in that case, 
the grave Academy could assume no responsibility for 
the publication of the work. It would therefore be 
better not to seek for its endorsement, but to print 
the treatise without any retrenchments. The author 
could content himself with announcing that, out of 

1 D'Alembert to Voltaire, Aug. 20, 1776. 
376 



THE WRATH OF VOLTAIRE 

respect for the assembly brought together at the Louvre, 
excisions had been made at the pubHc reading of that 
which Shakespeare pronounced openly before Queen 
Elizabeth. In this way the superior delicacy of the 
French court and people would be shown, while at 
the same time there would be indicated to the pubHc the 
unspeakable vileness of the man whom an ignorant and 
tasteless generation were celebrating as the creator god 
of the modern stage. 



377 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE DAY OF ST. LOUIS 

Sunday, the twenty-fifth of August, the day of St. 
Louis, came at last. A large and brilliant assemblage 
gathered at the hall of the Forty. Members of the 
nobility, ladies of the court, many of the most brilliant 
beauties of whom Paris could boast, were present on the 
occasion. A large number of Englishmen attended the 
exercises, amounting, it is said by some, to nearly a 
third of the audience. Among them were the British 
ambassador and Mrs. Montagu, who was spending the 
summer at the French capital. The pieces which had 
received prizes were first read. They were followed by 
an eulogium upon Homer, and then came the attack 
upon Shakespeare. 

In those days mail communication between Paris and 
Ferney took about a week. The train had been laid, 
the mine was about to be fired, which was to blow 
Shakespeare and his admirers into the air. Voltaire 
waited in some doubt and anxiety for the report. In 
a letter written during the interval, he reveals to us, 
inadvertently, as it were, the real cause of his agitated 
state of mind. D'Argental had encouraged him by the 
noble wrath, as Voltaire called it, which he had mani- 
fested against Le Tourneur. To him he communicated 
more freely than to any one else the feelings which had 

378 



THE DAY OF ST. LOUIS 

Stirred up this bitterness in his heart. " It is said," he 
wrote, " to the shame of our nation, that he " — that is, 
Le Tourneur — " has a lurge party made up of writers of 
dramas and of tragedies in prose, seconded by some 
Velches who believe themselves to belong to the parlia- 
ment of England. All these gentlemen, I am told, 
abjure Racine, and sacrifice me to their foreign divin- 
ity." ^ These last words it was which made manifest 
where and how the iron had entered his soul. It was 
bad enough to abjure Racine ; but the immolation of 
Voltaire to this strange god was convincing proof of 
the frightful decadence which had overtaken literature. 
His indignation kept rising at the terrible and debasing 
idolatry into which a portion of his countrymen had 
fallen. " There is no example," he added, " of a similar 
overturn of spirit, of a similar turpitude. The Gilles 
and the Pierrots of the fair of St. Germain, fifty years 
ago, were Cinnas and Polyeuctes in comparison with the 
personages of that drunkard of a Shakespeare whom 
Le Tourneur calls the god of the theatre." 

He was in a state of wrath, as he confessed himself. 
The first news that reached him from what he looked 
upon as the scene of conflict, brought him comfort and 
indeed exultation. He had discomfited the enemy. The 
Marquis de Villevieille set out for Ferney early in the 
morning of the day following the meeting of the Acad- 
emy to convey the glad tidings. He purposed to kill, if 
necessary, some post-horses in order to be the first to 
render to the Patriarch an account of his triumph. So 
we learn from D'Alembert, who had faithfully carried 

1 Letter of Aug. 27, 1776, to D'Argental. 
379 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

out his master's instructions, so far as he had been per- 
mitted. Following the military figure of speech set him 
by his chief, he was able to announce a great victory. 
The ' Letter,' ^ he wrote to Voltaire, had been received 
with the utmost favor. It had met with fervent ap- 
plause. It was unfortunate indeed that certain passages 
had to be omitted in order not to shock the piety of the 
devotees or the delicacy of the ladies. Still, enough had 
been preserved to cause much laughter and to contrib- 
ute effectually to the winning of the battle. 

In a similar strain wrote La Harpe to the grand-duke 
of Russia, for whom he acted the part of literary pur- 
veyor. " M. de Voltaire," he said, " sent us a piece upon 
Shakespeare, in which, placed between Corneille and 
Racine, he combats like a brave general for the glory of 
the French theatre against that of London, and against 
the silly enthusiasts who have desired to overthrow our 
stage and substitute for it the mountebank trestles of 
barbarism." ^ To us at this distance of time aU this 
perturbation of mind, this anxiety about the result, seems 
as uncalled for as the military language employed seems 
ridiculous. There was so little to excite surprise in the 
favor with which the ' Letter ' was received that the 
surprise would have been had it met with anything 
but favor. It was addressed to the prejudices of the 
auditors. They came prepared to sympathize ; or if 
indifferent, they were easy to be persuaded that the 
cause for which Voltaire was pleading was the cause 
of France. Furthermore the ' Letter ' was the produc- 

1 Letter of D'Alembert to Voltaire, Aug. 27, 1776. 

2 Correspondance litt&aire, vol. i. p. 417. 

380 



THE DAY OF ST. LOUIS 

tion of a man who had himself but little acquaintance 
and less sympathy with Shakespeare, addressed to a 
body of men, the large majority of whom had no 
acquaintance with him at all. It could not properly be 
said of them that their knowledge of the English drama- 
tist was less, but that their ignorance of him was more. 
National prepossession, reinforced by the celebrity of the 
critic, the greatest genius of his time, would induce them 
to welcome his views with enthusiasm. Under such con- 
ditions, if the reading was to be considered a battle, the 
victory was certain to be one gained with ease. 

Considerations of this sort did not occur to Voltaire. 
He was elated at the news of his success. He began to 
dream of a general vigorous onslaught upon this army 
of barbarians who were threatening the overthrow of 
the reign of good taste. He made up his mind, he 
declared, to labor for the resurrection of common-sense. 
He revolved a plan previously contemplated of making a 
more extended examination of the French theatre and 
the London fair. Before the day of St. Louis came, he 
had observed in one of his letters that he had always 
recognized the faults of Corneille ; he had spoken of 
them, if anything, too often. But they were the faults 
of a great man, while the one opposed to him the Eng- 
lish critic Rymer had with good reason called a villa- 
nous ape.i He was beginning to entertain for Shake- 
speare a feeling of positive hatred. The favor with 
which his attack upon him had been received tended 
now still more to intensify his dislike. He was deter- 
mined to convert the victory he had achieved over the 

1 Letter of Aug. 15, 1776, to La Harpe. 
381 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

partisans of the English dramatist into a total rout. 
This made him unwilling to follow the course which 
D'Alembert had declared to be necessary, if he wished 
the treatise to come out as printed by the authorized 
publisher of the Academy.^ This was the omission of 
the coarse words and passages which he had quoted. 
To these Voltaire clung, and all of them appear to have 
been retained. 

In the first flush of exultation at the news of his 
success, his denunciation of Shakespeare increased in 
violence. He professed himself more than ever 
astonished at the superstitious veneration with which 
he was regarded by the English. His thoughts on that 
matter he communicated to D'Alembert in reply to his 
account of the success which had attended the reading. 
" I have always wondered," he wrote, " that a nation 
which has produced geniuses full of taste and even of 
delicacy, as well as philosophers worthy of you yourself, 
should be willing to pride themselves upon this abomi- 
nable Shakespeare, who is in truth only a village buffoon 
and has not written two decent lines. There is in that 
obstinacy of bad taste a national madness for which it is 
difficult to assign a reason." To another correspondent 
at about the same time he revealed the secret of Le 
Tourneur's conduct. He had been overcome by the 
love of money. He was willing to exhibit the baseness 
of sacrificing France to England in order to obtain sub- 
scriptions for his translation from the men of the latter 
country who came to visit Paris. "It is impossible," 
he said, " for a man who is not an absolute fool to have 

1 D'Alembert's letter of Aug. 27, 1776. 
382 



THE DAY OF ST. LOUIS 

preferred in cold blood a Gilles such as Shakespeare to 
Corneille and Racine. That infamy can only have been 
committed under the influence of a sordid avarice which 
ran after guineas." ^ 

Having thus satisfactorily disposed of the motives of 
Le Tourneur for translating Shakespeare, he went on to 
give an equally satisfactory explanation of the origin of 
the erro]- of the English in admiring him. It was all 
due to the acting of Garrick. The player had created 
an illusion which had enveloped with its atmosphere the 
playwright. He had represented naturally what Shake- 
speare had disfigured by ridiculous exaggerations. In 
consequence some of the English had come to consider 
Shakespeare superior to Corneille because Garrick was 
superior to Mol^. This explanation, though it reveals 
to us the mind of the philosopher, can hardly be said 
to reveal the philosophic mind. Yet during the contro- 
versy that raged in Parisian circles after this meeting of 
the Academy, it was a reason for Shakespeare's popu- 
larity with his countrymen not unfrequently given. 
Madame Necker wrote to Garrick that it was the argu- 
ment employed by critics among her personal friends 
to explain away her enthusiasm for the English drama- 
tist, and her growing indifference to the plays produced 
upon the French stage. " You deceive yourself," they 
said. " It is only a majestic phantom which Mr. Gar- 
rick, that puissant enchanter, has evoked from the depths 
of the grave. When the charm ceases, Shakespeare 
re-enters into night." ^ All this naturally failed to 

1 Letter of Sept. 7, 1776, from Voltaire to M. de Values. 

2 Garrick Correspondeuce, vol. ii. p. 624. 

383 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

account for that enthusiasm which had styled him the 
inimitable, the divine, not only long before Garrick was 
heard of on the stage, but even before he was born, and 
to the existence of which Voltaire had himself borne fre- 
quent witness. Reflections of this sort possibly came to 
him as he was writing the letter. At all events he left 
the English to their fate. " I abandon them to their 
reprobate minds," he concluded ; " and I shall not make 
a recantation in order to please them." 

These last words suggest a state of mind of which he 
now began to make frequent manifestation. It is diffi- 
cult indeed to put a serious interpretation upon his 
language in the moment of what he deemed his great 
victory. One naturally supposes that he must be jesting. 
But there is no jocoseness either in the manner or the 
matter of what he said. The tone throughout is serious. 
It is a tribute to the strength of outraged vanity that 
the one man in Europe who was gifted by nature with 
the keenest sense of the ridiculous seems to have had 
no suspicion of the ridiculous part he was playing. He 
had declared war against England, he said, and in his 
opinion England must be as much impressed with 
the gravity of the situation as he was himself. Unsup- 
ported, deserted even by those who should have been 
his alHes, he had singly sustained the shock of conflict. 
" I am but an old hussar," he wrote, " but I have fought 
all alone against an army of Pandours. I flatter myself 
that at the end there will be found some true French- 
men who will join me, if there are some Velches who 
abandon me." ^ 

1 Letter of September 7 to M. de Vaines. 
384 



THE DAY OF ST. LOUIS 

All his utterances at this time pointed to the existence 
of a dreadful state of war, with its manoeuvres and strata- 
gems, and the devices of the enemy to neutralize his 
own efforts. Copies of his ' Letter to the Academy,' 
which he was distributing, failed to reach their destina- 
tion. It was an old complaint of his, and in those days 
of lax administration and careless handling of the mails, 
to say nothing of espionage and confiscation of forbidden 
matter, it was undoubtedly often a subject of just com- 
plaint. But the reason he assigned for the miscarriage 
in this particular instance partook of the singular 
delusion which liad now gained possession of his mind. 
" It must be," he wrote, " that some spy of the English 
has stopped my packages on the way, or that there is 
in France some great man who prefers Shakespeare to 
Corneille and Racine, and who takes sides against me." ^ 
The serious international nature of the controversy in 
which he was engaged was deeply impressed Upon his 
mind. " I do not know," he had written a few weeks 
earlier to the same correspondent, " whether, after having 
declared war against England, I shall be able to make 
my peace with it. I have no Canada to give it, no 
Indian company to sacrifice to it. But I shall not ask 
pardon of it for having sustained the beauties of Corneille 
and Racine against Gilles and Pierrot, and I do not 
beheve that the English ambassador will ask of the king 
the suppression of my declaration of war." ^ 

These manifestations of wounded vanity are bad 
enough ; but there is a still stranger part to this story. 

1 Letter of Oct. 2, 1776, to M. de Vaines. 

2 Letter of Sept. 4, 1776, to M. de Vaines. 
25 385 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

It is hard to believe, yet the evidence leads to but one 
conclusion. The man whose pointed periods had driven 
injustice and cruelty from the strongholds in which they 
had intrenched themselves ; who had wrung from a 
reluctant church and state unwilling reparation for the 
wrongs done to the families of Galas and Sirven ; whose 
indefatigable efforts had reversed the infamous decisions 
of judicial tribunals ; the champion of the persecuted to 
whom the wronged everywhere appealed for redress; 
the philosopher whose proclamation of the gospel of 
toleration had influenced the actions of the proudest 
potentates of Europe ; this great apostle of liberty of 
speech would have been delighted, could he have suc- 
ceeded in getting the translation of Shakespeare sup- 
pressed. At any rate he sought to have it taken out from 
under the patronage of the royal family. A letter of his 
to the Due de Richelieu with tentative suggestions of 
this nature cannot well bear any other interpretation. 

To this nobleman he sent a copy of his attack upon the 
English dramatist. In the communication accompanying 
it he told him that the founder of the Academy did not 
love the English. He was persuaded that the present 
representative of the family, who had made those same 
English pass under the Caudine Forks, would not take 
the part of Shakespeare against Corneille and Racine. 
One can pardon that people, he continued, " for boasting 
of their buffoons and merry-andrews. But is it per- 
mitted French men of letters to dare to prefer these 
burlesque shows of the fair, so low, so disgusting, so 
absurd, to masterpieces such as China and Athalie P " 
All respectable people at Paris, it seemed to him, were 

386 



THE DAY OF ST. LOUIS 

full of indignation at the despicable insolence of this 
sort which had been exhibited. He wished the Duke, 
the grand-nephew of the founder of the Academy, not 
only to share in this indignation, but to take steps 
to counteract the wrong done to the nation. " Le 
Tourneur," he wrote, " has dared to put the name of the 
king and the queen at the head of his edition, which is 
to dishonor France throughout Europe." It was the 
duty of Richelieu to step forth as the protector of his 
country in this war.^ 

Precisely what sort of a reply was made to this appeal 
we have no means of ascertaining. We can only infer 
sometliing of its nature from the answer it received from 
Voltaire. Richelieu's sense of the ridiculous was keen. 
It is pretty clear that he was more amused by the sensi- 
tiveness of his correspondent about his own reputation 
than impressed by his zeal for the reputation of Corneille 
and Racine. He undoubtedly did not feel that the 
fortunes of France were at stake because a French 
writer had written an essay which gave extravagant 
praise to an English dramatist, while neglecting to 
mention the name of a certain eminent living man of 
letters. As he himself was one of the subscribers to the 
translation, he was not likely to make any attempt to 
persuade the royal family to Avithdraw its patronage 
from the work. Indeed, even had he had any inclination 
to accede to Voltaire's wishes, he was not ignorant of 
the fact that he was quite a different man from the great 
cardinal whose name he bore, and occupied an altogether 
different position. He may have thought that Voltaire 
1 Letter to Richelieu, Sept. 11, 1776. 
387 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

was in earnest ; but he apparently did not let him sup- 
pose that he thought so. It is probable that he affected 
to treat the proposal as not seriously made. 

If so, he was at once undeceived. Voltaire gave him 
to understand that, accustomed as he was to find the 
Duke laughing at everything and everybody, his corre- 
spondent included, this was no laughing matter. On the 
contrary, it was very serious. " You are our dean," he 
wrote ; " you are the nephew of the Cardinal Richelieu. 
Certainly he would not have suffered a great work to be 
dedicated to Louis XIII., in which France was sacrificed 
to England. During my life of more than eighty years 
I have seen ridiculous and insolent performances ; but I 
have never seen any equal to this. It is of you princi- 
pally that I have thought it right to demand justice."^ 
But Voltaire evidently inferred from the Duke's reply 
that no help was to come from that quarter. A letter 
which he had received a few days before from D'Alem- 
bert had shown him plainly that no help could come 
from any quarter. For this result he was himself 
largely responsible. The mortification his vanity had 
endured from the remarks found in the preface of Le 
Tourneur had led him unthinkingly into displaying a 
lack of tact of which he had soon occasion to repent. 
It is not the only instance of the sort which can be met 
with in studying his career. 

No one appreciated more fully than Voltaire the in- 
fluence wielded by women at that time in political and 
social circles. No one in the preceding reign had paid 
more assiduous court than he to the Pompadour. He 

1 Letter to Richelieu, Oct. 15, 1776. 
388 



THE DAY OF ST. LOUIS 

was just as eager now to conciliate the queen of Louis 
XVI. To gain her support and that of the princesses 
in the controversy upon which he had entered was 
something that lay near his heart. In his 'Letter to 
the Academy ' he said several things which were de- 
signed for them and for them alone. In successive 
letters to D'Alembert he urgently insisted upon the 
retention — whatever else was omitted — of that which 
he had prepared to induce them to espouse his cause. 
"I conjure you," he wrote, "to leave standing my ap- 
peal to the queen and our princesses. It is necessary 
to engage them to take our side." ^ The queen espe- 
cially was to be won over ; of that result he was hope- 
ful. She loves the tragic theatre, said Voltaire ; she 
distinguishes the good from 'the bad ; she will in conse- 
quence be the upholder of good taste. So the passage 
was not stricken out in the reading, nor unfortunately 
for Voltaire certain others which revealed the sensitive- 
ness he felt at the patronage which had been bestowed 
upon Le Tourneur's translation by the royal family. 
He called upon the courts of Europe, upon the literary 
academies, upon the cultivated men of all lands, upon 
the men of taste in every condition of life to judge 
between the French and the English dramatists. This 
was a mere preliminary to the impassioned appeal he 
addressed to those wliose favor in this particular 
emergency he believed to be of more worth than 
that of all the otlier personages he had mentioned. 
"I dare," he continued, "to demand justice of the 
Queen of France, of our princesses, of the daughters 

1 Letter of Aug. 13, 1766. 
389 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

of so many heroes, who know how heroes ought to 
talk." 

In Voltaire's anxiety to impress upon the ladies of 
the court his conception how heroes ought to talk, he 
forgot to follow the politic way of talking to those 
of them who found themselves described, doubtless 
in some cases to their astonishment, as daughters of 
heroes. In attacking in the manner he did the version 
of Le Tourneur he had really attacked the persons whom 
he was most solicitous to gain over to his side. The 
translator, he said in his ' Letter,' had sought to sacri- 
fice France to England in a work which he had dedi- 
cated to the king and for which he had obtained the 
subscriptions of the queen and the princesses. Not a 
single one of his compatriots whose pieces were repre- 
sented on the stages of all the nations of Europe, even 
upon the stage itself of the English, was spoken of in 
his preface of one hundred and thirty pages. The name 
of the great Corneille was found but a single time. 
"Why," he added, "did he wish to humiliate his coun- 
try ? " The purport of all this was plain enough even 
to the meanest capacity. It was not the fancied slight 
put upon the great French tragedians of the past which 
troubled Voltaire. It was the failure to recognize and 
celebrate the great French tragedian of the present. 

The vanity displayed was surpassed by the tactlessness. 
The remarks just cited were really a covert insult. That 
neither Voltaire nor his partisans saw it, is a proof how 
completely they were blinded by the dust they them- 
selves had raised. There can hardly be the slightest 
question that the court appreciated the absurdity of the 

390 



THE DAY OF ST. LOUIS 

pretension of warfare that had been put forth, and 
the ridiculousness of the clamor that had been raised. 
Under any circumstances to call a work which had 
been dedicated by permission to the king a sacrifice of 
France to England was not judicious. If this view were 
accepted, only one conclusion could follow. The court 
lacked either patriotism or perspicacity. This was not 
the way to conciliate the favor of the king or queen or 
of the rest of the royal family. It could not have been 
agreeable to them to be stigmatized by implication as 
unpatriotic because a translation of Shakespeare had 
been brought forth under their auspices. They had in- 
deed made themselves in a measure responsible for its 
character and success. Le Tourneur furthermore was 
the private secretary of that member of the reigning 
family who in default of tlie survival of legitimate issue 
would inherit the crown. Wherever known, the trans- 
lator was regarded with respect. It was naturally not 
a gratifying circumstance to have terms of gross abuse 
heaped upon him, as had been done in the first pub- 
lished letter of Voltaire to D'Argental, because he had 
been engaged in a work which had received the ap- 
proval and encouragement of the court. 

The consequences were not long in manifesting them- 
selves. It soon appeared that the triumph on the day of 
St. Louis had not been so complete as D'Alembert had 
announced, and as Voltaire had been led to believe. 
About six weeks after the great victory the former was 
under the necessity of communicating to his commander- 
in-chief some mournful tidings. The success of which 
he had boasted had been followed by unpleasant re- 

391 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

verses. He had furnished the ' Letter ' to the bookseller 
for publication, as he had been directed. That person, 
not having a suspicion that there would be the slight- 
est obstacle in the way of its sale, had given it at once 
to the printer. No sooner had he done so than he met 
with a refusal to allow it to be sold. This was the first 
item of the interesting news, as he called them, which 
D'Alembert was enabled to communicate to his corre- 
spondent. The second was like unto it, only it was a 
good deal worse. The Academy had asked of the king 
five hundred livres a year, in order to increase its prizes, 
and arouse still more the emulation of the younger men 
of letters. This too had been refused. The report ex- 
isted that the devotees at Versailles had persuaded the 
king that the extracts, culled with so much pains from 
Shakespeare for their coarseness, were injurious to re- 
ligion ; " although," added D'Alembert with natural 
indignation, " at the public reading all the indecent 
passages had been cut out." He ended the communica- 
tion of his unpleasant tidings with bewailing the credit 
possessed at court by these hypocritical slanderers.^ 

Criticism whicli depends for its success upon mis- 
representation and misquotation pays for any temporary 
victory it achieves with ultimate defeat. The unfair- 
ness and unscrupulousness of the course Voltaire had 
adopted was easily seen by those Frenchmen present at 
the meeting of the Academy who chanced to know any- 
thing about Shakespeare. Even in that hall filled with 
ignorant sympathizers tliere had been found dissenters 
from the general applause the ' Letter ' had received. 
1 D'Alembert to Voltaire, Oct. 15, 1776. 
392 



THE DAY OF ST. LOUTS 

When announcing the victory, D'Alembert had written 
to Voltaire that it was hardly necessary to say that the 
English who were present on the occasion went away 
exceedingly dissatisfied. Their disgust could be en- 
dured with equanmiity, if not seen with pleasure. But 
others too were there who had to be considered. While 
arrangements were making for this attack upon the 
translation, D'Alembert had admitted that among the 
Parisian men of letters there were some deserters from 
the good cause, there were some traitorous brothers. 
He assured his correspondent, however, that these 
would be taken and hanged. It is clear that some of 
these traitors, lost to the sense of shame as well as of 
sin, had made their way to the meeting. D'Alembert 
somewhat grudgingly conceded the fact. Equally ill- 
pleased as the English, he wrote to Voltaire, were certain 
Frenchmen, who, not content with being beaten by the 
islanders on land and sea, wished also to be put to flight 
on the stage. This, converted into the language of com- 
mon-sense, meant that there were Frenchmen present who 
had not lost their reasoning faculties sufficiently to con- 
sider admiration of Shakespeare as a crime, or to regard a 
translation of his works into their language as an act of 
treason. They doubtless thought that if the plays of 
Corneille and Racine could not stand a comparison with 
a version, which, even if it represented fairly the mean- 
ing of the original, could not convey any proper concep- 
tion of its poetry, they had better be relegated at once 
to insignificance and obscurity. 

Voltaire was thrown into a state of astonishment 
and dismay by the tidings communicated by D'Alembert. 

393 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

That there was anything injurious to religion in his 
attack upon Shakespeare was too ridiculous to be 
spoken of seriously. It might be offensive to delicacy ; 
it certainly was not to piety. There was clearly some 
other agency which had brought about a refusal to 
license the sale of the work, though his partisans con- 
tented themselves with the one just specified. He tried 
vainly to fathom the cause that had produced the 
prohibition. The charge against the ' Letter ' might 
have been, he fancied, the work of the translator. As 
he had been found capable of exalting Shakespeare, he 
was conceivably liable to commit any other iniquity. 
Voltaire suggested that Le Tourneur, conscious that he 
could have nothing to say for himself, had perhaps 
insinuated to the great nobleman upon whom he de- 
pended, that there was heresy, deism, atheism, in this 
diatribe against his author. His word would be believed ; 
for no one took the trouble to read for himself.^ 

This was a possible explanation ; but it was not 
altogether satisfactory even to its author. Any one 
indeed can now see that the plea of impiety for refusing 
permission to sell the piece was the baldest sort of 
pretext ; it ought to have been seen by everybody then. 
But to whatever cause the prohibition was due, the 
melancholy fact of its existence could not be denied. 
The little work which was to crush the infamous con- 
spirator who was seeking to sacrifice France to England 
had been struck down in the house of the authorized 
defenders of the realm. To add to the misery of the 
situation, the Academy which had cheered Voltaire 

1 Voltaire to D'Alembert, Oct. 7, 1776. 
.394 



THE DAY OF ST. LOUIS 

on in his attack had met with a rebuff from the 
same quarter. That was the penalty it had paid for 
standing up for the honor of the national literature. 
Well might the old man believe that the age of deca- 
dence, so long impending, was now fully arrived. 
Everywhere the foes of good taste were triumphant. 
He had been contemplating the composition of a second 
letter, more interesting, he said, than the first. But the 
evil news he received took the heart out of him. There 
was no use in forming new projects or undertaking new 
enterprises. " I die disagreeably," he wrote ; " I have 
seen literature die in France." ^ 

In reply D'Alembert was able to send somewhat more 
encouraging news to the despondent octogenarian. The 
tone of his letter was however decidedly different from 
that earher one in which he had announced to his leader 
that the deserters would be taken and hanged. The 
situation of affairs had in fact undergone a complete 
reversal. The deserters were apparently to inflict the 
punishment instead of receiving it. Voltaire was in- 
formed by his correspondent that he would not be 
burned : owing to the clemency of his judges he would 
merely be hanged.^ His 'Letter to the Academy ' could 
now be bought by the public. D'Alembert himself had 
seen it offered for sale at the Tuileries. " The prohibi- 
tion," he wrote, " of saying anything against the English 
theatre and against Shakespeare has been removed." 
Still none the less, he continued, did the idiotic belief 
prevail at Versailles that this ' Letter ' was an impious 

1 Voltaire to D'Alembert, Oct. 7, 1776. 

2 D'Alembert to Voltaire, Oct. 15, 1776. 

395 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

work. In consequence the money for the increase of 
prizes had been definitely refused to the Academy. 
But he exhorted his friend not to cease his prosecution 
of the war, to go on with that second letter demolishing 
the English drama and its great dramatist. Voltaire 
tried to take heart. He would devote himself, he said, 
to the flogging of Shakespeare. But he failed to carry 
out his resolution. The preface to his tragedy of irewe, 
which goes under the name of the second letter to the 
Academy, was not written at this time. 



396 



CHAPTER XX 

INDIFFERENCE OF THE ENGLISH 

Authors are frequently disposed to take themselves 
very seriously. This is a feeling on their part about 
themselves which is rarely shared in by their brethren. 
With them it is more often made a subject of ridicule 
than of solemn consideration. But while this is true in 
general, it was not true in the case of Voltaire. Seri- 
ously as he took himself, he was taken just as seri- 
ously by many of his contemporaries. There was some 
warrant for their state of mind. He had accomplished 
so much that lay outside the legitimate fields of literary 
activity ; he had so impressed men by the fact that single- 
handed he had overthrown the decisions of judicial 
tribunals ; he had even been so successful in modify- 
ing the policy of great sovereigns, that little limit was 
set to what it was in his power to perform. He had 
declared war, he said, against England. Men asked 
themselves gravely, what would be the consequence. 
The belief in the momentous nature of this proceeding 
was shared in by others as well as by himself. 

That Voltaire with his insatiable vanity, coupled 
with his long literary sovereignty, should entertain the 
feeling about the importance of any action he took is 
not so very surprising ; but that it should be exhibited 

397 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

by so clear-headed an observer as Grimm shows to what 
an extent this singular mental distortion had come to 
exist among men of letters. That generally impartial 
reporter of what was then going on in France had 
previously spoken with the slightest trace of irony of 
the somewhat touching state of amiable feeling which 
had been for some time existing between France and 
England. He expressed a fear that bitterness might 
arise in consequence of the translation of Shakespeare, 
and the patriotic resentment, as it was called, of Voltaire, 
which had led him to attack it. How widely the 
delusion prevailed as to the international importance of 
this action is evidenced by the fact that this generally 
cool observer regarded the ' Letter to the French 
Academy ' as what its author called it, a declaration of 
war in form. He remarked that it was difficult to 
foresee what might be the consequences. Would the 
EngHsh people j)ermit the French Academy to discuss 
quietly the justness of Shakespeare's claim to the 
idolatry with which he was regarded by that whole 
nation ? Would they recognize the competence of the 
tribunal ? ^ The answer to both questions was ridic- 
ulously easy. The decision of the French Academy on 
the merits of Shakespeare would have as much weight 
with Englishmen as a similar decision of any learned 
body in England on the merits of Corneille would have 
with Frenchmen. It is undoubtedly the truth, as Grimm 
remarked, that contemptuous and hostile remarks, so 
frequently indulged in by men of letters, contribute 
powerfully to the ill-will that springs up between 

1 Correspondance litt&aire, tome ix., p. 1 1 7 ff. 
398 



INDIFFERENCE OF THE ENGLISH 

nations. But it is their criticism of a whole people 
that irritates ; rarely the criticism of individual authors. 
As to any ill effect to be produced by the ' Letter to 
the French Academj'- ' Grimm's mind was speedily set at 
rest. It was a proof, he remarked later, of the pacific 
disposition reigning among the rival nations of Europe 
that the extraordinary diatribe of Voltaire was listened 
to with patience from beginning to end by the large 
number of English who were present, and among them 
by the English ambassador, who sat gravely through 
the whole reading, not once permitting a smile to be 
seen upon his face at any of the amusing passages with 
which the discourse abounded. The only sign of re- 
sentment reported as having been displayed is recorded 
by La Harpe. Its importance may be estimated from 
the fact that it came from a boy of ten or twelve years 
of age. Like all good English people he had been 
brought up, La Harpe ^ tells us, in the religion of Shake- 
speare. He is represented as boiling over with wrath 
at the sarcasms of Voltaire and at the laughter of the 
assembly. He wanted to hiss. He found it hard to 
understand why he had not as much right to relieve 
his feelings in that fashion as the others had by applause. 
Assuming that he was possessed of all the precocity 
which this account requires, he must have longed to 
hiss on general principles, and not from any real knowl- 
edge of Shakespeare's plays or appreciation of Voltaire's 
sarcasms. There was indeed this justification for his 
state of mind, that there would have been full as much 
intelligence in the hissing to which he would have given 

1 La Harpe, Correspondance litte'raire, tome i. p. 417 (ed. of 1802). 
399 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

utterance, as there actually was in the applause mani- 
fested by the majority of the assembly. The incident, 
however, if not so exaggerated as to be practically 
apocryphal, was assuredly of no possible importance. 
The attitude of the British ambassador was that main- 
tained by his compatriots. It was evident enough that 
if the Academy wished to determine the question of 
Shakespeare's merit, the English could not prevent it if 
they tried. It was equally evident that they had no 
disposition to try, 

Voltaire's private letter of July 19 to D'Argental, 
which had at once been made public, had been put forth 
as a manifesto of hostilities. It was so spoken of gen- 
erally. The ' Letter to the Academy ' which followed 
was the actual declaration of war against the English. 
Such hie himself loudly proclaimed it. But in order 
to have a war there must necessarily be two parties. 
Unfortunately for Voltaire's proclamation of hostilities, 
the English, once full of resentment at his disparage- 
ment of Shakespeare, did not now seem to care enough 
about the matter to make a fight. So far from answer- 
ing his attack upon their favorite dramatist, they can 
hardly be said to have discussed it at all. Whatever 
plans may have been formed — if any were formed — 
of replying to his charges, ended in talk. His letter 
to D'Argental denouncing Le Tourneur and his ver- 
sion had been carried over to England. A transla- 
tion of it appeared in the newspapers. It excited 
amusement and derision a good deal more than it did 
irritation ; but even of the former there was little ex- 
hibition. Hardly a word of comment upon this letter 

400 



INDIFFERENCE OF THE ENGLISH 

appeared in any periodical publication of whatever char- 
acter. Horace Walpole is the only person of literary 
prominence who seems to have left any record of the 
impression it made ; and this was confined to his private 
correspondence. He transmitted to Mason Voltaire's 
letter to D'Argental in the original French. He spoke 
of it as a silly torrent of ribaldry and described its 
author as the worst of dunces, a genius turned fool with 
envy. ^ Voltaire's further discourse to the French Acad- 
emy he characterized later as being "as downright 
Billingsgate as an apple-woman would utter, if you over- 
turned her wheelbarrow." " It hurts me," he added, 
" when a real genius like Voltaire can feel more spite 
than admiration, though I am persuaded his rancour is 
grounded upon his conscious inferiority." 2 In these 
words Walpole may be said to have embodied the com- 
mon English opinion of the ' Letter.' 

A translation of this attack upon Shakespeare came 
out at London in March, 1777. The same indifference 
continued to be manifested. As had been the case 
with the original, the translation excited but little com- 
ment. A careful examination of the magazines of the 
period — the periodical publications in which the indig- 
nant Briton of those days usually vented his wrath — 
shows only barest references to the ' Letter ' either by 
regular contributors or occasional correspondents. The 
long-established and leading reviews of the time, the 
' Monthly ' and the ' Critical,' had merely brief notices of 

1 Letter to Masou, Sept. 17, 1776, Cunningham's edition of Walpole's 
Correspondence, vol. vi. p. 375. 

■2 Ibid., p. 379. Letter to Mason of Oct. 8, 1776. 
26 401 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

it, the longest being but a dozen lines. Their omission to 
consider it at length is significant of the little interest 
it inspired, because they not unfrequently paid a good 
deal of attention to works produced in foreign lan- 
guages, and might naturally be supposed to have a 
special interest in this particular piece. There was how- 
ever then published another review, the ' London. ' Dur- 
ing the first part of its brief existence it was rather a 
personal organ of Kenrick, its founder, than an organ of 
public opinion. It had little circulation and less in- 
fluence. The course it took is the only exception to the 
general rule of indifference which prevailed. In this 
review a large share of the ' Letter ' was translated with 
a few running comments. The general character of 
the estimate expressed by it was summed up in the 
opening paragraph of the criticism. In it the discourse 
was described as exhibiting the vanity, petulance, and 
invidious disposition of its celebrated author.^ This 
was very mild for Kenrick, whom many will remember 
mainly from Macaulay's designation of him as "the 
polecat." To be abused by him was no distinction ; he 
abused everybody. Besides these notices, a few epi- 
grams in the magazines, a few passages translated, gen- 
erally without conmient, in the newspapers, make up 
all the part which England played in this so-called war. 
Doubtless in the multifarious literature of the years 
immediately following Voltaire's death, further refer- 
ences to his attack on Shakespeare can be found ; for 

1 The ' London Review,' vol. iv. p. 50 (1776). Kenrick further sent to 
the ' Gentleman's Magazine ' (Dec. 1776, vol. xlvi. p. .556) a not altogether 
agreeable character of Voltaire, which he said had been communicated to 
him by a French gentleman. 

402 



INDIFFERENCE OF THE ENGLISH 

though the English did not reply, they were not hkely 
to forget. Still the few which have come under my 
own observation do not rival in bitterness some of those 
produced much earlier in the century. Beattie indeed 
spoke with much contempt of Voltaire and his followers, 
who fancied that nothing was in taste unless it was in 
the French taste ; who condemned Shakespeare's plays 
as absurd farces, because formed upon a plan whicli 
they did not approve. Criticism of this sort, he added, 
was as much below the notice of rational inquiry as 
modes of hair-dressing or patterns of shoe-buckles.^ 
But the charge more commonly repeated was that of 
plagiarism. Davies, in his ' Dramatic Miscellanies,' 
said, for instance, that no ghost would ever have ap- 
peared upon the French stage, had not Voltaire been 
struck by that in ' Hamlet.' " Thence," he added, " he 
warmed his Semiramis with that fire which he stole 
from the man whom he admires, envies, vilifies, and 
grossly misrepresents." ^ 

But not often was even so much irritation as this 
displayed. The truth is that by this time the English 
had generally settled down into the comfortable con- 
viction of Shakespeare's assured superiority to all 
dramatists ancient or modern. That any one should 
take a different view rarely begot resentment; it was 
rather a feeling of compassion that was aroused for 
the intellectual shortcomings of the person entertain- 
ing it. The general attitude is pretty fairly con- 
veyed in an article which appeared in 1772 in the 

1 Dissertations Moral and Critical, by James Beattie, 1783, p. 183. 

2 Dramatic Miscellanies, vol. iii. p. 36. 

403 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

leading review of the time. It is one of a series of 
highly favorable notices of the Questions sur VEncyclo- 
p'edie which had been published the preceding year. 
" When Mr. Voltaire," said the writer, " affects to place 
Corneille above our divine Shakespeare, we feel no in- 
dignation at such a preposterous preference ; we do not 
even charge the critic with a total want of taste and 
judgment in the works of genius. We know the inno- 
cent vanity which attends the amor patrice, and forgive 
him while 

* He holds his farthing candle to the sun.' " ^ 

Accordingly Voltaire need have felt no anxiety that 
the English ambassador would insist upon the suppres- 
sion by the French government of his declaration of war. 
He could have safely dismissed the fear that any apology, 
any recantatiqn, would be required on his part, that in 
fact anything would be demanded of him personally in 
exchange for the ratification of a treaty of peace. The 
time had gone by for any feelings approaching sen- 
sitiveness. An attack upon Shakespeare was either 
received with absolute indifference or produced the same 
amused wonderment with which one would now regard 
an attack upon the Copernican system. An attitude, 
not controversial but contemptuous, was taken towards 
those, whether natives or foreigners, who continued 
still to cherish the rapidly disappearing belief of a 
vanished age that Shakespeare was simply an inspired 
barbarian. We can find it exemplified in Maurice 
Morgann's Essay on Falstaff. This came out the year 
following the appearance of the ' Letter to the French 

^ Monthly Review, vol xlvii. p. 5.36. 
404 



INDIFFERENCE OF THE ENGLISH 

Academy.' It expressed in a confident and indeed inso- 
lent way the view of Shakespeare which the English 
were now coming generally to hold. " When the hand 
of time," said Morgann, "shall have brushed off his 
present editors and commentators, and when the very 
name of Voltaire, and even the memory of the language 
in which he has written, shall be no more, the Appala- 
chian Mountains, the banks of the Ohio, and the plains 
of Sciola shall resound with the accents of this barbarian. 
In his native tongue he shall roll the genuine passions 
of nature ; nor shall the griefs of Lear be alleviated, or 
the charms and wit of Rosalind be abated by time." ^ 

There was another reason too for tliis indifference. 
Voltaire suffered to some extent from the penalty which 
those men undergo who establish a reputation for humor. 
He was liable not to be taken seriously, even when he was 
most serious. To a certain extent it was so in the case 
of this particular discourse. It was regarded by some as 
little more than a piece of pleasantry on the part of " the 
old joker of Ferney," '^ as he was styled in one of the 
reviews. Why therefore should he be answered in 
earnest ? Garrick indeed wrote to Madame Necker that 
rods were in preparation for Voltaire by several English 
wits. Mrs. Montagu, on her return from Paris in Octo- 
ber, had sent him the ' Letter to the French Academy.' 
In it, as has been remarked, his cutting out of the grave- 
diggers' scene had been mentioned with approval and 
adduced as a proof of the revival of taste among the 
English. It was a sore point with the actor. He had 

1 Morgann's Essay, etc. (1777), p. 65. 

2 Mouthly Review, vol. liv. p. 400, May, 1776. 

405 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

now come to see that his alteration had met with no 
favor from the educated class of his countrymen. He 
was also far from pleased with being reckoned as an ally 
of the French author in his depreciation of Shakespeare. 
" His letter to the French Academy," he wrote to 
Madame Necker, "is no addition to his genius or his 
generosity, and his errors are without end. I pity his 
ill-placed anger." ^ The punishment, however, which he 
predicted as being in store for Voltaire always remained 
in store. It was never taken out of it. Everything 
there was of that nature has been already indicated here. 
The only reply that came from England was written by 
an Italian in the French tongue. 

This was the work of Baretti, the friend of Dr. John- 
son and the calumniator of Mrs. Piozzi. It is itself a 
proof of the indifference prevalent among the English 
that he was the only person who undertook the task. 
In fact, it was their indifference which he gave as his 
reason for undertaking it. Everybody was asleep, he 
remarked, and Voltaire was permitted to speak without 
contradiction. This had prompted him to produce his 
apology for the poet ; and for the sake of being read in 
France, to produce it in a tongue which he said he had 
not mastered fully, though he had studied it much.^ 
"I have taken courage," he wrote, "to unmask an in- 
solent impostor, who for half a century has sought to 
make himself accepted in all Europe as a special scholar 
in English and Italian, though he has no real apprecia- 

1 Garrick Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 190. Letter of Nov. 10, 1776. 

2 The Barton collection in the Boston Public Library contains Earetti's 
treatise with annotations by himself. Words and sentences are altered, 
and errors he had made in his use of the French language are corrected. 

406 



INDIFFERENCE OF THE ENGLISH 

tion of the one or of the other." The work was through- 
out in harmony with the somewhat violent tone of this 
passage. It began with denying Voltaire's knowledge 
of English and ended with denying his knowledge of 
Italian. The two treatises in the former tongue which 
had been produced during his exile, Baretti declared 
were not really the composition of the French author; 
nor in that tongue had he written a single letter after 
his return to his native land. For neither of these 
assertions did he give any authority ; and the one in 
regard to his correspondence we know to be false. 

Baretti was much more successful in attacking the 
unpoetic character of Voltaire's translations of poetic 
phrases and passages. These renderings he asserted, and 
asserted justly, could in some instances be due only to 
ignorance or to malice. The version of ' Julius Caesar,' 
in particular, of the faithfulness of which Voltaire was 
constantly boasting, was attacked with peculiar savage- 
ness. It was made, Baretti said, in the style of a school- 
girl. ' Julius Caesar ' had not been translated, but had 
been assassinated. Criticism couched in such language 
cannot be deemed genial ; but for all that, it was in 
this case entitled to a good deal of consideration. Ba- 
retti may not have been the highest type of man, but his 
knowledge and ability were conceded by men much abler 
than himself. Upon the accuracy and excellence of a 
translation from English into French he spoke with dis- 
tinct authority. He was familiar with both languages ; 
and his exposure of the unfaithfulness of some of Vol- 
taire's renderings in spirit, even where it was not in 
meaning, was one not to be met successfully. 

407 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

Baretti's explanation of the outburst of wrath directed 
against Le Tourneur was based indeed upon the ground 
that Voltaire was conscious of the inadequacy of his own 
renderings. Others might be simple enough to believe 
what he had written ; but that was a pitch of credulity 
at which the author himself had not arrived. A man, 
he observed, does not call another a scoundrel, an imbe- 
cile, a buffoon, for nothing. The reason for this abuse 
was manifest. If the new version came out, Voltaire be- 
lieved that his own reputation as censor of English lit- 
erature would be destroyed at once. Baretti represented 
him as soliloquizing after the following fashion : " My 
enemies will not fail to compare my translation of 
Shakespeare with Le Tourneur's. They will recognize 
at once its inaccuracy and unfaithfulness. People will 
see the English dramatist with other eyes than mine. 
All the horde of scribblers with whom France abounds, 
will hurl themselves upon me." The Italian on his part 
undertook to console the Frenchman by assuring him 
that nobody would ever undertake the trouble to insti- 
tute a comparison between the two versions. Le Tour- 
neur's he had not seen, but he knew it must be poor, 
because no good version of Shakespeare could be made 
into any language descended from the Latin. Least of 
all could it be made into French with its poetry enchained 
in alexandrines, reminding one of a procession of monks 
marching two and two with equal and grave steps along 
a perfectly straight road. It is an additional proof of the 
indifference of the English to this assumed state of war 
that Baretti's defence did not excite even as much com- 
ment as Voltaire's attack. Scarcely any notice whatever 

408 



INDIFFERENCE OF THE ENGLISH 

was taken of it in the periodical literature of the time. 
It was violently assailed indeed in this same ' London 
Review ' of Kenrick's, The discourse was there amiably 
described as " impertinent effusions of the vanity of a 
self-conceited foreigner : who would be thought to know 
everything and hardly knows anything." ^ In compari- 
son with this criticism the previous comment upon Vol- 
taire's ' Letter ' can be deemed eulogy. 

But if Voltaire had not stirred up an international 
war, he had added fuel to a civil one. The controversy 
which went on in France in regard to Le Tourneur's 
version lies almost entirely outside of the limits of this 
work. But in that country it raged violently. During 
this and the years immediately following, the merit of the 
translation was a subject of constant and heated discus- 
sion in the literary journals of France and the Uterary 
circles of its capital. " There are very strong parties pro 
and con here at Paris," wrote one of Garrick's correspond- 
ents in May, 1777. "All the Voltairians cry it down; 
others again are more enthusiastic (if possible) than we 
are who have tasted of the Avon. For my own part the 
best I can say of it is, that it is Shakespeare reduced to the 
simple state of nature, despoiled of his gorgeous pomp 
and majesty, his brilliancy and his graces, but not dis- 
figured." 2 Such was the report of an English woman who 
had, according to her own account, pointed out to Le 
Tourneur some of the mistakes he had made. She looked, 
however, upon the whole controversy with a good deal 
of indifference. Not so another friend of Garrick's, who 

J London Review (1777), vol. v. p. 531. 

2 Garrick Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 214. Letter of May 30, 1777. 
409 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

was a Frenchwoman. She belonged to the Voltairian 
party, though in deference to her correspondent she 
tried to assume a tone of impartiality. In this she was 
not entirely successful, for her own indignation had been 
kindled by the views contained in that terrible prefatory 
matter which Le Tourneur had so shamelessly put forth. 
" You are right," wrote Madame Riccoboni, " in believing 
that La Harpe will attack your favorite poet. He is 
enraged against the translation of which the foolish 
preface has disgusted everybody. Shakespeare stood in 
no need of their awkward eulogies," There was the sore 
spot. The praise bestowed upon the English dramatist 
had excited the susceptibilities of the Voltairians to the 
utmost; it was something which could not be forgiven. 
" That preface," continued the irate woman, " badly 
written, more badly reasoned, has done considerable harm 
to the translation, and tends to make prominent the 
faults and the unfaithfulness with which its authors are 
reproached." ^ 

The controversy on the Continent concerns us here 
only so far as English writers were directly or indirectly 
swept into its current. The reply of Rutledge to Vol- 
taire may therefore be dismissed in a few words ; for 
though of English descent he was born in France, and 
in that country spent his life. In its language also his 
works were written. Two or three months after the 
' Letter to the French Academy ' was published, he 
brought out some observations upon it in reply. Though 
the grandson of an Irish Jacobite, he had not renounced 
allegiance to Shakespeare, even if he had to Shake- 

1 Garrick Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 628. 

410 



INDIFFERENCE OF THE ENGLISH 

speare's country. He asserted his superiority to the 
dramatists of other lands. He maintained the correct- 
ness of his course in introducing into the scene charac- 
ters of all sorts from the highest to the lowest. This in 
French eyes was a proceeding utterly unworthy of the 
dignity of IVIelpomene, as they phrased it ; and their 
avoidance of it was unquestionably responsible for the 
extent to which they relied upon the pomp of declama- 
tion to supply the lack of action. Upon the inferiority 
of their methods Rutledge insisted strongly. But unlike 
Baretti, in combating the views of the man he criticised, 
he was uniformly respectful and even courteous in his 
language. Still perfectly familiar as he was with both 
the French and English tongues, he was necessarily 
struck by the bad faitli which Voltaire had frequently 
exhibited, especially in his pretence that the so-called 
blank verse into which he had translated ' Julius Cassar ' 
revealed in the slightest degree the character and effect 
of English blank verse. False statements of this nature 
he had no hesitation in exposing. But his share in the 
controversy belongs rather to French than to Enghsli 
literature. For us it is only important to dwell upon 
the part played by INIrs. IMontagu's ' Essay.' 

No sooner had Voltaire's ' Letter ' been published than 
the partisans of Shakespeare arranged to have this work 
translated. Its writer had been spending her summer in 
the French capital. Two of her sayings had been widely 
circulated in the literary salons of Paris, and perhaps 
increased the disposition to produce her " Essay ' for the 
benefit of those who were interested in the controversy. 
They are not very remarkable, but they are distinctly 

411 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

better than anything to be found in her pretentious and 
over-praised book. One was a comment upon Voltaire's 
remark in the published letter to D'Argental that he 
had been the first to exhibit to his countrymen some 
pearls wliich were found in Shakespeare's enormous 
dunghill. " It is a dunghill," said Mrs. Montagu, 
when the letter was shown her, " which has fertilized a 
very ungrateful soil." This was a renewal of the old 
charge of plagiarism which the French author was never 
allowed to forget. Her second saying was her reply to 
the journalist Suard, who, after the reading on the day 
of St. Louis, had expressed to her some concern lest 
what she had heard might have proved displeasing. 
" Not at all," was her answer ; " I never professed myself 
to be a friend of Monsieur de Voltaire." In her private 
letters, however, she displayed somewhat more feeling. 
She wrote to Garrick that during the meeting of the 
Academy, she had " felt the same indignation and scorn 
at the reading Voltaire's paper, as I should have done 
if I had seen Harlequin cutting capers and striking his 
wooden sword on the monument of a Csesar or an 
Alexander the Great." ' 

The ' Essay ' on Shakespeare was accordingly trans- 
lated, and came out in the course of the year following 
the publication of the ' Letter to the Academy.' Though 
produced long before, it was regarded by many as a sort 
of reply to that discourse. From the attention paid to 
it by both parties, it must have met with a good deal of 
success. Clear-headed and impartial observers saw indeed 

* Garrick Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 188. Letter of Nov. 3, 1776. 
412 



INDIFFERENCE OF THE ENGLISH 

that Mrs. Montagu had unwittingly given up the cause 
she was striving to champion ; that she had really 
acknowledged the justice of all the charges which had 
been brought against Shakespeare to prove that he was 
deficient in art. But in France still more even than in 
England the very weakness of the ' Essay ' contributed 
to its favorable reception. It was far better suited to the 
ideas and tastes there prevailing than the uncompromis- 
ing preface of Le Tourneur, which had sent a shock to 
French classicism through its entire being. That had 
been too strong meat to suit the queasy stomachs of any 
but the most radical revolters against the practices of the 
French drama. The foreign iidmirers of the ' Essay,' 
like the English, were more impressed with its assertion 
of Shakespeare's merits than by its admission of his 
faults. The very admission, indeed, showing clearly the 
candor of the writer, gave added strength to the 
encomiums in which she indulged. 

So the war went on. Voltaire from his retreat at 
Ferney was constantly animating his cohorts. Yet one 
gets the impression from the correspondence of the clos- 
ing year and a half of his life that he secretly felt that 
he was fighting for a losing cause. The references in it 
to current events are not many ; but they all point one 
way. The pessimistic view of the condition of literature 
in France became, if anything, more pessimistic. The 
admiration for Shakespeare was merely one of many signs 
of that inundation of ignorance and bad taste which 
could not much longer be held in check. " I succumb," 
he wrote, " under my maladies, under my enemies, under 
the factious friends of Shakespeare, under the devotees, 

413 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

under all the barbarians." ^ Even when he urged on his 
followers to continue fighting there was an undertone of 
depression. To friends and partisans he broke out into 
frequent lamentation. " I saw the end of the reign of 
Augustus," he wrote to La Harpe in January, 1778, 
" and I am now in the Lower Empire. ... I confess to 
}'0u that tlie barbarism of Du Belloi and his associates 
is almost as unendurable as the barbarism of Shake- 
speare. Du Belloi is a hundred times more inexcus- 
able, for he had models, and the English buffoon had 
none." It was for La Harpe to revive the reign of good 
taste. It was he who must struggle bravely for it in 
prose and verse. With impatience he waited, he said, 
the result of his correspondent's reply to that Montagu 
la shakespearienne? 

In certain ways the disciple he exhorted was better 
fitted than he himself to carry on the war which he 
had begun. For, after all, Voltaire remained a good 
deal impressed in his heart by much which he had found 
in Shakespeare, even at the very time he was relieving 
his resentment at the growing interest in the English 
dramatist by heaping upon him terms of abuse. He 
could not, however, escape entirely from his own sense 
of justice and keenness of appreciation. But for an im- 
partial examination of Shakespeare's merits, from the 
Voltairian point of view, uncontaminated by the preju- 
dices which dog the footsteps of even the slightest 
knowledge. La Harpe had been for a long period pre- 
eminently equipped. He could not read a sentence of 

1 Letter to Jladame de Saint-J alien, Oct. 30, 1776. 

2 Letter of Jan. 14, 1778. 

414 



INDIFFERENCE OF THE ENGLISH 

the English author.^ But an insignificant obstacle like 
that, instead of acting as a deterrent to the expression 
of opinion, gave it only freer and fuller course. Planted 
upon the sohd rock of ignorance, he was enabled to 
survey without disturbing emotion the whole field of 
English literature, and to dispense praise and blame 
with that calm severity of judgment which belongs only 
to the intelligent and uninformed. When Baretti's 
reply to Voltaire fell into his hands he was consequently 
enabled to describe it with calmness and without bias as 
the work of a sort of Anglicized fool. Caliban, highly 
praised in the treatise he thus criticised, was represented 
as a grotesque and fantastic creation suited only to pieces 
that were to be played at fairs. Other views he contro- 
verted with the same imperial ignorance. " The soph- 
isms of these crazy persons," he concluded, " who are 
striving to put Shakespeare above Sophocles and 
Euripides, above Corneille and Racine, belong to the 
number of remarkable extravagances in the history of 
the human spirit." ^ 

Le Tourneur's translation, however, gave La Harpe 
some slight knowledge of the Enghsh dramatist. He 
improved it to the uttermost. He went to work on a 
criticism of ' Othello.' He set out to treat not only the 
conduct of the piece, but to compare the style of the 

^ I base this statemeut upon Griinm, who certainly ought to have 
known, and who expressly asserts that La Harpe did not know a word of 
English. {Correspondance htte'raire, tome ix. p. 119.) While I enter- 
tain no doubt on the point, it is right to add that La Harpe himself con- 
stantly gives the impression in his writings, or rather implies, that he is 
familiar witli the English tongue. 

2 La Harpe, Correspondance Htte'raire (1802), tome ii. p. 179. 

415 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

original with that of the French version. Proceedings of 
this sort somewhat shocked Grimm. He had lived long 
in Paris ; he had become pretty fully imbued with the 
ideas about dramatic art which prevailed in his adopted 
country. But the Teutonic strain in his blood could 
not abide with satisfaction the sight of a discussion 
going on about the comparative worth of productions 
which the critics could not read. He had witnessed a 
similar exhibition in the case of Homer, whose merits 
had been magisterially pronounced upon by men who 
did not understand Greek. A hke procedure was now 
taking place in the case of Shakespeare. Knowledge 
of the language in which he wrote was not deemed 
essential; hardly indeed knowledge of what he wrote. 
" Usprit,'' was Grimm's sarcastic comment, " supplies 
everything." ^ 

There was balm, however, to be applied to the harassed 
feelings of Voltaire. His closing days were to be the 
most triumphant of the many triumphant days of his 
life. In 1778 he was in his eighty-fourth year. He 
had for a long while been ailing. At least he was 
always complaining in his correspondence of his various 
maladies, even at the time he was accomplishing work, 
to do which would have tasked the strength of an 
ordinary man in the full vigor of his powers, if it did 
not break him down entirely. He boasted of liis ill- 
health very much as he boasted of the faithfulness of 
his translation of ' Julius Caesar.' Voltaire was in 
truth a valetudinarian by profession, — at least he be- 
came so, — and like many such men seems to have been 

^ Grimm, Correspondance litteraire, tome ix. p. 119. 
416 



INDIFFERENCE OF THE ENGLISH 

endowed by nature with the capacity of living forever. 
Certain it is he possessed a sort of health which gave 
him constant disquiet, and enabled liini to outlive nearly 
all his actual contemporaries. It looks indeed as if he 
might have rivalled Fontenelle in length of life, and 
have reached too his hundredth year, had it not been 
for that fatal visit to Paris. In February, 1778, be 
suddenly left the quiet of Ferney, and most unexpect- 
edly made his appearance in the French capital. The 
ostensible pretext for the journey was his desire of 
having the tragedy of Irene brought out under his own 
immediate supervision. He carried with him also a 
reply to Mrs. Montagu which he had composed in the 
closing months of the previous year. 

It was going on towards thirty years since he had 
last set foot in the city. A whole generation had come 
upon the stage since his departure from it in 1750. 
Those who composed it had never seen the man ; but 
they had read his writings, they had imbibed his views, 
they felt for him personally the veneration of disciples 
for the great master. Tremendous was the commotion 
when the news of his arrival was noised abroad ; more 
tremendous the enthusiasm. Paris went mad with ex- 
citement and joy. The clergy, to be sure, stood lai-gely 
aloof ; but for this Voltaire cared little. The court 
viewed his coming with dislike ; and for this he cared a 
great deal. But, after all, what were court and clergy to 
the acclamations of a whole people who hailed him as 
the deliverer of the human mind from intellectual and 
spiritual bondage, and, what was even dearer to his 
heart, as the triumphant champion who had compelled 
27 417 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

religious fanaticism and political injustice to let go 
their victims, tliough fairly in their toils. Crowds 
waited for hours in the streets to gain a momentary- 
glimpse of his person. The gates of buildings he was 
to enter were besieged by multitudes who gave way 
slowly to permit him to pass, and closed upon his foot- 
steps with clappings of hands and cries of joy. His 
ordinary movements indeed were like the journeys of a 
royal progress ; but no monarch ever received from 
enthusiastic subjects a more spontaneous tribute of 
loyalty and admiration and love than was paid by high 
and low to this uncrowned king. Versailles looked on 
in moody silence at an outburst of adoration which it 
dared make no attempt to repress. A clerical party 
there was which was filled with hot indignation at this 
display of idolatrous devotion. In their eyes it was 
directed to an enemy of God who had made a mock 
of the religion of his country and had held its priest- 
hood up to scorn. Never before had the world witnessed 
such an example of defiant apostasy. Peter had denied 
his Lord; but he had repented. Voltaire had done 
worse. He had denied the devil, and he had not re- 
pented. But it was useless to think of stemming the 
tide of popular transport, which burst all barriers 
and bore down everything before it. The wiser heads 
felt too that there was nothing about it permanent, 
and that the only safe way was to let it run its 
course unchecked. Voltaire himself saw the vanity 
of the adulation he received ; he recognized its tran- 
sitory character. None the less did he enjoy it, and, 
happily for him, he died before the inevitable reaction 

418 



INDIFFERENCE OF THE ENGLISH 

had time to set in. Followed wherever he went by 
enthusiastic crowds, feted in every quarter, received 
with homage by the Academy, crowned in the theatre, 
the honors lavished upon a man still full of energy and 
fire, but feeble with the weight of more than fourscore 
years, proved too much for his strength. No one will 
grudge the old warrior the glories of his parting day. 
He did not die, it is true, in the odor of sanctity ; in 
place of it he had been stifled by the incense of popular 
applause. 

But even when the hour of death was drawing nigh, 
he did not lose sight of one object which had so long 
occupied his thoughts. The play of Irene, as originally 
published,^ was accompanied by a dedicatory preface 
to the French Academy, which in later editions went 
under the title of a letter to that body. This prelim- 
inary discourse had been read at the meeting of the 19th 
of March — three days after the first public represen- 
tation of the tragedy — and had been received with ap- 
proval and applause. Thanks had been solemnly 
tendered to the octogenarian for this renewed vindica- 
tion of French taste and art. Two thirds of it was 
given up to a reply to Mrs. Montagu's ' Essay.' It was 
rather a defence of Corneille, and especially of Racine, 
against her charges, than an attack upon Shakespeare. 
In regard to him he did little more than go over for the 
twentieth time the old ground. His pieces were not 
acted outside of England; they mingled prose and 
verse; they were a hodge-podge of serious and comic 
scenes, in which the princes talked like street-porters 

1 Bengesco's Bibliographie, vol. i. p. 85. 
419 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

and the porters like princes; they stretched over in- 
definite spaces of time. Of course he could not refrain 
from remarking that he had been the first to extract a 
little gold from the mud in which the genius of Shake- 
speare had been plunged by his age. He had been say- 
ing it for forty years ; it had now become as inveterate 
a habit as dram-drinking. But this preface, otherwise 
unimportant, shows us that the controversy was still 
going on as to the comparative merits of Corneille and 
Shakespeare. " I blush," he said, " to join together 
these two names ; but I learn that this incredible dis- 
pute is renewed in the midst of Paris." His last letter 
to D'Alembert transmitted this dedicatory epistle and 
begged him to let him know whether it was unworthy 
of the Academy and his correspondent, and if he might 
hope it would be of any use. 

This is the final utterance of Voltaire on Shakespeare. 
It is interesting, as everything he wrote was interesting ; 
but, like the previous ' Letter to the Academy,' it added 
nothing to what he had said before. Repetition was all 
the argument he used; and not merely the repetition 
of his own words, but of those which his disciples had 
learned from him. He quoted La Harpe as gravely as 
if he did not know that an echo cannot add anything 
to the meaning and force of the original voice. But 
there is in this discourse but little trace of the truculent 
tone which he had displayed towards Le Tourneur. 
While combating the opinions of Mrs. Montagu he 
treated her with old-fashioned courtesy. There was an 
occasional flash of the ancient fire, as, for instance, in his 
comment upon her condemnation of Racine for his 

420 



INDIFFERENCE OF THE ENGLISH 

constant introduction of love-scenes into his tragedies. 
" It is beautiful, without doubt," he said, " for a lady to 
reprove that universal passion which causes her sex to 
reign." But strokes of even this kind are unusual. 
In general the piece is tame. It lacks throughout that 
virulence which is always dear to the reader when ex- 
hibited against views he does not hold or authors he 
does not like. Considering indeed the later utterances 
of Voltaire which have been quoted, breathing, as they 
do, defiance and threatenings and slaughter, it is beauti- 
ful, to use his own phrase, to find him concluding this 
preface in a spirit of meekness and charity to all. He 
inveighed in this closing discourse against making a 
national quarrel out of a question of literature. He 
assumed the attitude of a man who had never been 
influenced by the prepossessions of country or race. " I 
have done justice," he cried, " to the English Slmke- 
speare and to the Spanish Calderon. I have never 
paid heed to national prejudice." Who will charge 
with insincerity the words of a dying man ? The force 
of self-delusion could no farther go. 



421 



CHAPTER XXI 

LATER RESULTS OF THE CONTROVERSY 

In the mean while the cause of all this tumult, the 
main object of all these attacks, made no sign. He had 
been assailed with the epithets of scribbler, scoundrel, 
scavenger, fool, and he had held his peace. None the 
less had he persisted steadily in the prosecution of his 
diabolical task. Henceforth the work was wholly his 
own. His two coadjutors had retired with the publication 
of the first instalment ; one of them indeed died in 1780. 
In 1778 appeared two additional volumes, with the names 
of about one hundred and fifty new subscribers. What 
is of interest here is that they were nearly all French. 
In the fifth volume which came out the following year 
were added to the whole number about fifty more names. 
It was mortifying to the adherents of pure art that such 
an undertaking should meet with such success. But, 
after all, what difference did it make if useless compila- 
tions and wretched versions were received with favor 
by an undiscerning public I " What matters it," said 
La Harpe, " to enlightened spirits, who read only for 
instruction or pleasure, that Messrs. Le Tourneur and 
company translate in a barbarous style the barbarous 
farces of Shakespeare ?" • The comments of the wren 
upon the eagle are always of interest, not for any value 

^ La Harpe, Correspondance litte'raire (1802), tome iii. p. 220. 

422 



LATER RESULTS OF THE CONTROVERSY 

they have in themselves, but because they indicate the 
wrens state of mind. 

That some of his old friends and correspondents are 
to be found in these last lists of subscribers would 
have brought an additional pang to Voltaire's heart, 
had he been living. The truth is that his violence, as 
might have been expected, had overshot the mark. He 
had aimed to impair the fortunes of the translation, if 
not destroy it altogether. He had actually done all that 
lay in his power to help it forward. His attacks upon 
it had aroused curiosity. Had there been any question 
as to the outcome of the undertaking, the kind of war- 
fare he waged against it would have insured its success. 
The publication of the successive instalments went on 
steadily. Its twenty volumes are usually described as 
having been completed in 1782 ; but its nineteenth 
bears the date of the year following. 

Le Tourneur, in spite of the provocation which he 
had received, had never returned the railings of his 
adversaries. In his later volumes, however, he intro- 
duced a number of critical opinions expressed by other 
writers. In a few instances they came from " Mistriss 
Montaigu ; " but mainly they were taken from Eschen- 
burg, who was just then engaged in putting through 
the press the revision and completion of Wieland's 
translation of Shakespeare. Le ToUrneur would have 
been more than human had he not experienced a quiet 
pleasure in transcribing some of the views of the Ger- 
man professor. They were indicative of the new ideas 
that were beginning to prevail in his country. By 
Eschenburg Voltaire was reckoned among the imitators 

423 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

of Shakespeare. Nor were his partisans treated with 
much respect. These opinions of his Le Tourneur in- 
troduced without committing himself to their justice. 
They constituted part of the literary history of the 
English dramatist, and therefore had a right to be in- 
serted. In giving them he simply remarked that men 
who judged others must expect to be judged them- 
selves ; but it is noticeable that he indirectly called atten- 
tion to the fact that there was nothing personal in 
these critical comments which he was publishing. They 
were purely literary. He could not but remind by 
implication his readers of the terms of gross abuse with 
which he himself had been assailed. " Some other 
writers," he wrote, " still living and distinguished among 
us, undergo also the purely literary criticism of the 
German translator. If he is deceived, it is their priv- 
ilege to count his opinion as of no value. For myself, 
a faithful translator, and indifferent to these discussions, 
my object is to get together that which can make clear 
and interesting the work which I have undertaken to 
make current in our tongue." 

It probably gave no great pang to Le Tourneur's feel- 
ings to reproduce the disparaging opinions expressed of 
the abilities of the men who had made upon him so violent 
an onslaught. But he himself indulged in no attacks 
upon his opponents. He spoke indeed of the cold and 
jealous criticism which Voltaire had passed upon ' Julius 
Caesar,' and referred to an essay of his own in which he 
had replied to that author's censures upon the play with 
more of detail tlian was due to any merit they pos- 
sessed. Once only did he make any reference to the 

424 



LATER RESULTS OF THE CONTROVERSY 

tempest of the tea-pot nature which had been stirred up 
by his translation. It was in a notice to the subscribers 
accompanying the volumes brought out in 1781. In 
that he spoke of the kind of bizarre war which had 
been waged against the work at its birth, to the extraor- 
dinary wrath of a great poet, the panegyrist of Shake- 
speare so long as he was unknown, his enemy as soon 
as he was translated. Over all the obstacles then raised 
in the way of its success the work had triumphed. The 
contempt which Le Tourneur justly felt for the commo- 
tion which had been aroused was very thinly veiled. 
"At so much noise," he remarked, " at the tocsin of 
certain critics, who multiplied their clamors much more 
than their reasons, one would have supposed that 
Shakespeare was an enemy who threatened to invade 
France, and that the translation of an English poet, 
which in old time would have conferred a sort of liter- 
ary distinction, had become a kind of outrage against 
the country." By this time indeed the agitation had 
pretty well died out. The men who had been foremost 
in exciting it had apparently begun to feel somewhat 
ashamed of the course they had taken. Let us at least 
give them that much credit for the peaceful attitude 
that most of them now assumed. Le Tourneur at the 
time felt himself justified in saying that everybody had 
now come to concede, some openly, some secretly, that 
the foreign author was possessed of extraordinary merit. 
With the translation itself it is easy to find fault. 
Being in prose, it was necessarily inadequate. Many 
passages were imperfectly and some wrongly rendered. 
Nor was the special criticism contained in the work 

425 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

always of a character to be treated with much respect. 
But there is no translation of Shakespeare into French, 
no translation of Corneille or of Racine into English, 
with which fault cannot easily be found. A great prose 
work can be rendered into another tongue so as to give 
the foreigner a reasonably fair conception of the effect 
produced by it upon the mind of him to whom its 
language is native. Not so in the case of a great poem. 
There thought and feeling and expression are too inex- 
tricably blended to be successfully separated. Even if 
the version produces effect, it will rarely be the effect 
wrought by the original. This is true of languages 
closely allied ; but it is immeasurably truer of languages 
so alien in spirit and genius as French and English. 
In them the inherent difficulty assumes almost the 
nature of an impossibility. The form may be success- 
fully imitated ; the meaning may be preserved ; the ver- 
sification may be reproduced : what has disappeared in 
the process is the incommunicable something which 
gives to poetry its value and distinction. It is not per- 
haps a task beyond human power to represent Shake- 
speare adequately in French or Corneille in English ; but 
Shakespeare will be really known to Frenchmen and Cor- 
neille to Englishmen only when in each case a genius of 
essentially the same kind and equal in degree shall 
devote himself to the task of reproducing the one in 
the language of the other. The difficulty is that when 
such a man comes, he will find other and more impor- 
tant work to do than that of translation. 

It therefore follows that no Frenchman can be made 
to feel through the medium of translation what Shake- 

426 



LATER RESULTS OF THE CONTROVERSY 

speare is to Englishmen, and no Englishman what 
Corneille is to Frenchmen. In poetry the manner is, if 
anything, more important than the matter ; and manner 
cannot be rendered. Baretti had asserted in his reply 
to Voltaire that no one could really understand the 
great Elizabethan dramatist without making himself 
familiar with the language in which he wrote and hear- 
ing his pieces constantly played. This opinion excited 
the derision of La Harpe. As very few persons could 
be induced to undergo this preliminary preparation, it 
was a necessary consequence that practically no one but 
a native had a right to sit in judgment upon Shake- 
speare. To a man who relied for his critical conclusions 
more upon esprit than upon knowledge, this seemed the 
most ridiculous of views. Yet it was the very view 
which his master had proclaimed long before in regard 
to works much easier of comprehension than tragedies. 
In his ' Philosoi^hical Letters,' Voltaire had declared that 
the only way a man could appreciate English comedy was 
for him to go to England, spend three years in London, 
make himself master of the tongue, and visit the play- 
house every night. Observations such as these disclose 
his full appreciation of the limitations put upon the 
judgment of the critic to whom ample knowledge of 
the language of an author is denied. But while it shows 
how well he understood the difficulties that stand in the 
way of the foreign reader of a great poet in getting a 
full conception of his greatness, it further makes 
almost ridiculously conspicuous his matchless effron- 
tery in stating again and again that by his bald and 
unpoetic versions he had put the inhabitants of the 

427 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

Continent in a position to decide upon the merits of 
Shakespeare. 

An adequate translation of a poet of the highest 
rank is in general about as visionary an object of pursuit 
as the quest of the Holy Grail. But though it is hope- 
less by this agency to convey the full appreciation of his 
genius, an approximation to this result is always possible. 
Accordingly attempts of such a nature are always to 
be welcomed and encouraged. The poorest version of 
a great foreign work may contribute something, a good 
version will contribute much, to break down the barriers 
existing between literatures and incidentally between 
nations. The very failures made point the way to those 
who follow to devise improvements. Translation gives 
an idea, even if an unsatisfactory one, of the genius of 
the writer and of the race to which he belongs. "What- 
ever faults may be found with the version of Le Tourneur 
— and many have justly been found — it was an honest 
attempt to furnish his countrymen with a conception of 
what Shakespeare really was, not by piecemeal fragments 
like La Place's, not by poetic renderings which carefully 
left out the poetry, like Voltaire's, still less by descrip- 
tions designedly intended to turn into ridicule what Avas 
described. Whatever its errors and deficiencies. French- 
men had now for the first time an opportunity to get 
some understanding of the reasons which had produced 
the enthusiastic admiration felt in England for their 
great dramatist. It was pioneer work Le Tourneur did, 
and it was certain to exhibit the defects under which 
pioneer work invariably labors. But that is no reason 
for failing to render it the praise to which it is justly 
entitled. 428 



LATER RESULTS OF THE CONTROVERSY 

Le Tourneur had succeeded in carrying through his 
undertaking. But though Voltaire had failed in his im- 
mediate object of preventing the continued publication 
of the translation, none the less did his words bear fruit. 
Upon the Frenchmen who then knew and appreciated 
Shakespeare, what he said produced no effect, or an effect 
quite contrary to what he intended. But, after all, these 
were comparatively few in number. The enthusiastic 
admiration then professed for the English author had 
been, in the case of many, little more than a freak of 
fashion. If left to run its natural course, it would in 
time have been displaced by some other fashion, if Vol- 
taire had never said a word. As it was, he merely has- 
tened the inevitable, and gave it strength after it had 
arrived. There seems little doubt that his 'Letter to 
the French Academy ' produced an immediate effect upon 
that group of idle and thoughtless persons who relied 
upon others for their opinions and knowing nothing and 
caring less for the matter in dispute, naturally floated 
with the general current and tended to swell its volume. 
After the day of St. Louis there was probably a distinct 
falling off in the number not of those who felt real 
enthusiasm for Shakespeare, but of those who had been 
pretending to feel it. Grimm gives us the sentiments of 
the set with which he came mainly in contact. The 
' Letter ' of Voltaire, he said, was a criticism, displaying 
little moderation, both of the translation and of the 
original. But it was comical, it made men laugh ; and 
the author who produces that effect, most of all in 
France, cannot fail to be right. In consequence it was 
generally decided in Paris that the poet who for two 

429 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

hundred years had been the delight of England was 
nothing but a barbarous actor, and his translators 
deserved to be shut up in a lunatic asylum.^ 

This is an exaggerated statement made shortly after 
the reading of the ' Letter,' and drawn from the opinion 
of a limited class. Still it contains a certain portion of 
truth which in process of the years was to become much 
truer. For another cause came gradually in to hasten 
the decay of the sentiment which had first been disposed 
to welcome Shakespeare with fervor. The touching 
amiability, then widely commented on, between France 
and England, was to disappear. Further it was to be 
replaced in time by positive hatred. The reasons for 
the estrangement were even then manifesting themselves. 
The one country secretly favored the cause of tha 
colonies which had revolted from the other. It soon 
proceeded to give them open aid. The war which 
sprang up naturally did not contribute to the popularity 
of English literature in France. Still its effects were 
slight compared with the hostility and aversion that 
were aroused when the more terrible struggle which came 
later had widened the breach between the two peoples 
and imparted peculiar bitterness to their feelings. In the 
long series of Napoleonic wars the vital centre of resist- 
ance to all the aims and efforts of the emperor was the 
island whose sea-walls made her invasion impracticable. 
During this period nothing English could be or was 
popular in France. It was inevitable that Shakespeare 
should be included in the general proscription. It was 
no time then for Frenchmen to be asked to abandon their 

^ Correspondance litt€iaire, tome ix. p. 242, November, 1776. 

430 



LATER RESULTS OF THE CONTROVERSY 

dramatic deities for those of their hated foe. It took a 
long period after the peace to heal the literary as well as 
social alienation produced by years of conflict. It was 
a long while before the question of dramatic art could be 
discussed calmly. The estimate taken of Shakespeare 
by Voltaire found readier and wider acceptance when 
the Anglomania which had prevailed during his later 
life had been converted into Anglophobia. His influence 
more than held its own after the Revolution ; it distinctly 
increased. His misapprehensions and misstatements 
were accepted with unquestioning faith by his country- 
men. No one can glance even superficially at much of 
French critical literature between 1800 and 1830 with- 
out recognizing how completely it reflects the views of 
Voltaire, and repeats almost his ver}^ words. The cus- 
tom has not entirely died out at the present day. 

France had to wait fifty years for her deliverance ; to 
Germany it came much earlier. The revolution was 
going on in that country during the last years of 
Voltaire's life, though he himself may have been un- 
aware of it. There is little question but it would have 
come there some time before, had it not been for him ; 
there is no question that his all-powerful influence dur- 
ing the eighteenth century distinctly retarded in every 
quarter the appreciation of Shakespeare's greatness. It 
made men content to remain in ignorance ; and as long 
as ignorance existed there was little disposition to con- 
trovert what he said. Evidence of this state of things 
comes from many sources ; here we confine ourselves 
to one. The same English traveller to whom in 1776 
Voltaire had communicated his opinion of the English 

431 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

admiration of their greatest dramatist bears witness to 
the wide prevalence on the Continent of his critical views 
at the very time they were on the point of being crushed 
by the mightier spirit he had evoked, but found to his 
dismay that he could not exorcise. In his journeys over 
Europe whithersoever he had gone, whether it were from 
Paris to Berlin or from Berlin to Naples, Sherlock com- 
plained that he had heard the name of Shakespeare con- 
stantly profaned, whenever it came up for consideration. 
The words " monstrous farces " and " grave-digger 
scenes " had been repeated in every town. For a long 
time he could not conceive why every one uttered these 
two phrases and these alone. But one day he chanced 
to open a volume of Voltaire. The mystery was at once 
dispelled. Both expressions were found in the work, 
and from these, men everywhere had learned them by 
heart.^ The ovine nature of man shows itself nowhere 
more distinctly than in criticism ; and when a magnifi- 
cent old bell-wether, like Voltaire, led the way, the 
whole flock would be sure to hurry after him, ignorant 
of the ground over which they were going, careless to 
what end the path led which they had taken. 

Sherlock had another opportunity to witness the influ- 
ence of Voltaire in the instance of a man of far mightier 
powers than the educated tourists with whom he came 
in contact. In 1779 he was at Berlin. There he was 
admitted to an audience with the Prussian monarch. 
Sherlock had celebrated Frederick in his writings: he 
had also distinguished himself by his zeal for Shake- 

1 Sherlock's Letters, ed. 1802, vol. ii. p. 249, under sub-title, A Frag- 
ment on Shakespeare from Advice to a Young Poet. 

432 



LATER RESULTS OF THE CONTROVERSY 

speare, though like Mrs. Montagu's, it was a zeal not 
altogether according to knowledge. The great king 
commented upon this enthusiasm, and attacked the great 
dramatist with vigor. He began gently, but warmed to 
the work as he proceeded. " You admire Shakespeare ? " 
he asked of Sherlock. " I do, sir," was the reply, " as 
the greatest genius that ever existed." But it was not 
for nothing that Frederick had read French literature all 
his life, and associated with its most celebrated contem- 
porary author. " Permit me to observe," he answered 
— or as Sherlock expresses it, he condescended to say — 
"that when a man undertakes to labor in any art, of 
which the rules are fixed and determinate, he ought to 
confine himself to those rules. Aristotle — " The men- 
tion of that name was the signal for what were undoubt- 
edly the usual remarks upon the unities, though they 
were not given by the reporter of the interview. All 
that we are told here is that the king spoke with great 
strength and learning.^ 

Strength and learning come easy to a king in the eyes 
of the admirer who is permitted to enjoy the privilege of 
an interview. The usual result followed. The ancient 
philosopher declared it difficult to contend in argument 
with the master of thirty legions. Sherlock found him- 
self in a far harder case. He had to carry on a dispute 
with the hero of thirty battlefields. When we take into 
further consideration the respective intellects of the two 
men, the disparity assumes a character almost painful. 
According to his own account, Sherlock said all he could 

1 Sherlock's Letters, ed. 1802, vol. ii. p. 79. 
28 433 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

consistently with the respect he owed to his royal oppo- 
nent. He appealed from Aristotle's rules to the tribunal 
of nature and reason. He insisted — humbly insisted, 
he tells us — upon the incontestable prerogative of 
genius to create, and that consequently Shakespeare had 
the same right to invent a species of poetry as had 
Thespis. It was all to no purpose. He found that the 
monarch had been corrupted by Voltaire. " I was al- 
ways obliged to agree that he was right," says Sherlock, 
pensively, "while I endeavored to prove that he was 
wrong." 

Frederick, as we all know, was the unconscious leader 
who was to guide the German people to the promised 
land, wliich he was so far himself from desiring to enter 
that he turned away from it with eyes of aversion. There 
is no more striking picture of the change of mind which 
was coming over the Continent, and the disgust and even 
horror which was inspired by it among the classicists, 
than his essay on German literature, which came out in 
1780. No one now, after reading it, will recognize the 
strengtli and learning which Sherlock found in profusion 
in his hero. On the contrary, he will be mainly impressed 
by the ease with which a great king can exhibit himself 
as a poor critic. There is nothing original, nothing 
striking in anything which is found in its pages. It is 
but a rehash of commonplaces which had been said over 
and over again, and derive their only importance here 
from the fact of having been uttered by a man who was 
a genius in spite of being a monarch. It is Voltaire's 
ideas to which he gives expression ; it is practically Vol- 
taire's very words which he repeats. It is in the follow- 

434 



LATER RESULTS OF THE CONTROVERSY 

ing way that he discourses upon the mighty revolution 
which was going on before his eyes : — 

"To convince you," he wrote, " how little is the taste 
which prevails even in our days in Germany, you have 
only to be present at the public spectacles. You will 
see there represented the abominable pieces of Shake- 
speare, and all the audience in transports of joy in listen- 
ing to these ridiculous farces worthy of the savages of 
Canada. I call them farces because they sin against 
all the rules of the theatre. These rules are not arbi- 
trary, you find them in the 'Poetics' of Aristotle, where 
the unity of place, the unity of time, and the unity of 
interest are prescribed as the sole means of rendering 
tragedies interesting. Instead in the English pieces the 
scene lasts for the space of some years. Where is the 
likeness to reality? There are street-porters and dig- 
gers who make their appearance and hold conversations 
worthy of themselves, then come princes and kings. 
How can this bizarre mixture of baseness and grandeur, 
of buffoonery and tragedy, move and please ? One can 
forgive Shakespeare these bizarre errors ; for the birth 
of the arts is never the period of their nativity. But 
there is yet a Goetz von Berlichingen, which appears 
upon the stage, a detestable imitation of these bad Eng- 
lish pieces, and the pit applauds and demands with 
enthusiasm the repetition of these disgusting irration- 
alities. I know there is no disputing about tastes : 
however, permit me to tell you that those who find as 
much pleasure in rope-dancers, in puppets, as in Ra- 
cine's tragedies, wish only to kill time. They prefer 
that which speaks to the eyes to that which speaks to 

435 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

their minds, and that which is only a spectacle to that 
which touches the heart." ^ 

Fortunately for his success in war, Frederick had not 
felt himself under any obligation to use the equipments 
and formations which had enabled Aristotle's pupil to 
conquer the world. He did not display the same sagac- 
ity in the field of criticism. The result was what might 
have been expected. He could hold his own against 
Europe in arms ; he was powerless to contend success- 
fully with Shakespeare. The agencies that were to 
overthrow all his cherished dramatic beliefs were in 
active operation during the latter part of his life. Nine 
years before his essay appeared, another English travel- 
ler had visited Berlin. It was Dr. John Moore, a writer 
of some note in his day and not altogether forgotten now. 
He had the privilege of being present at various festivals 
of the court. At Sans-souci he found the great French 
actor Le Kain appearing in some of his principal charac- 
ters. Two at least of Voltaire's plays he saw performed, 
— -one the tragedy of 3Iahomet, the other the king's favo- 
rite piece, the tragedy of (Edipe. This was the continu- 
ation of an ancient custom. But if Moore found the 
occupant of the throne rejoicing in listening to Voltaire, 
he found the heir to it deep in the study of Shakespeare. 
He was taking pains to learn the English language. He 
had at this time read two or three of the plays of its 
greatest author. Moore tells us that he was almost in- 
clined to dissuade him from the study of Shakespeare, 
full comprehension of whom it was difficult for even 

1 De la litte'rature allemande (1780), p. 22, in Seuffert's Deutsche 
Litter aturdenk male, 1883. 

436 



LATER RESULTS OF THE CONTROVERSY 

Englishmen to gain, and almost impossible for foreign- 
ers. The prince admitted all this. But though he 
might never be able to appreciate the dramatist fully, 
he was determined to persevere: for he was confident 
that he should understand enough to repay him for all 
his trouble. Some detached parts he had already mas- 
tered, and these struck him as superior to anything he 
had met in the works of any other poet. The present 
and the future were here in juxtaposition. The reign- 
ing monarch listening to Voltaire, the future monarch 
studying Shakespeare, were indicative of the order of 
things going out and of the order of things coming in.^ 

1 Works of John Moore, vol. i. p. 288 (ed. of 1820). Letter from 
Potsdam. 



437 



CHAPTER XXII 

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 

A WORK of this character, which sets out to give only 
a single phase of the most varied literary life that was 
ever lived, is certain, if taken by itself, to produce a dis- 
torted and erroneous impression of the man. So far 
as his relations to Shakespeare are concerned, Voltaire 
does not appear to advantage. The evidence has been 
given fully in the preceding pages ; it seems to me a 
not unwarranted claim that it has been given fairly. 
If so, there can hardly be any question as to the ver- 
dict to be rendered. The record is one of persistent 
misrepresentation; in some instances, though it is a 
hard thing to say, of deliberate falsification. There 
was at times more than the suggestion of the untrue, 
there was its actual assertion; while the suppression 
of the true was regularly exhibited in all the later 
references to the English dramatist. 

This course on the part of Voltaire was not in all 
cases due to intention to misrepresent. It was partly 
the result of ingrained habits of mind, to the ability 
he possessed of persuading himself that things actu- 
ally were what he wished them to be. To some extent 
he imposed upon himself. But there are instances in 
which no such palliation can be pleaded in his behalf. 

438 



GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 

He resorted of set purpose to devices for evading and 
perverting the evidence when the statement of the 
simple facts would have been damaging to the side he 
was advocating. By so doing he was largely success- 
ful in imposing upon the men of his own time; nor 
even at the present day has his influence in this respect 
altogether ceased with his countrymen. His contem- 
poraries, as a general rule, did nob know enough of 
Shakespeare to controvert his statements. Those of 
them who really knew did not have repute enough 
with the public to make headway against his author- 
ity. Those who came later to know rarely cared 
enough about his views to take the trouble to expose 
their falsity. Hence his misrepresentations, widely cir- 
culated at the outset, continue still to be repeated 
occasionally, though they no longer have the general 
acceptance they gained at the time of their original 
utterance. The influence they then exerted cannot 
be questioned. So far as Shakespeare was concerned, 
Ferney became in the later life of Voltaire a centre 
for the diffusion of ignorance. His admirers attributed 
to the Patriarch not merely the impartiality which he 
affected, but an intimacy of acquaintance with the 
dramatist and his writings to which he had not the 
least pretension. With the ability to produce belief 
in his omniscience among his readers Voltaire was 
peculiarly gifted. No one ever possessed as much as 
he this most valuable of assets among those belonging 
to the critic's stock in trade. No one ever exhibited 
more than he that adroitness which leads others to 
believe that you know what you do not know. 

439 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

Certain conclusions — two in particular — there are 
which follow legitimately from the survey which has 
been taken of Voltaire's attitude towards Shakespeare. 
They have been more than once implied in the com- 
ments made in the course of this narrative ; they have 
in some instances been asserted. But in this closing 
chapter it seems desirable to bring into juxtaposition 
and prominence some general truths which, though 
indicated if not expressed already, are in danger of 
being overlooked, separated and scattered as they have 
been in the preceding pages. One is that there was 
never any real change in Voltaire's opinion about 
Shakespeare. The contrary has been often affirmed. 
Charges to that effect were even brought against him 
in his lifetime, and they have been pretty constantly 
repeated since his death. For them there is no just 
foundation. In his estimate of the English dramatist, 
Voltaire is entitled to whatever credit belongs to con- 
sistency. That which Shakespeare appeared to him 
in the beginning, he remained to the end. It is by 
the marked difference he displayed in the manifesta- 
tion of his feelings that men have been led to assume 
that his views varied. In his later years he was dis- 
posed to lay more and more stress ilpon what he 
regarded as the deficiencies of the dramatist, upon prac- 
tices of his which seemed to him censurable. Equally 
he came to pass over in silence what he had once 
thought worthy of being mentioned with praise. But 
in neither instance was this conduct due to any change 
in his own opinion. It sprang from the irritation he 
felt at the change of opinion which was going on 

440 



GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 

among his countrymen. He was angered by the undue 
admiration, as it struck him, that they were paying 
to Shakespeare; at the disposition they were manifest- 
ing to rank him above the great dramatists of his own 
land, and inferentially above himself. 

But though outraged vanity plays a most conspicu- 
ous part in the course he took, it is important to repeat 
again what has been previously remarked, that in what 
he said Voltaire was in general perfectly sincere. He 
honestly believed that the art of Shakespeare was rude 
and barbarous. It was not an allied type, with ideas 
and methods peculiar to itself, but a distinctly debased 
and debasing type, the prevalence of which would lead 
to the return of barbarism. In denouncing the Eng- 
lish author he therefore felt that he was standing up 
for the cause of good sense and good taste. It was 
his duty to do everything that lay in his power to 
prevent the spread of a degrading superstition which 
was celebrating Shakespeare as the supreme divinity 
of the dramatic world. Without question he inter- 
preted very liberally the privilege of representation, 
or rather of misrepresentation, which it was permitted 
him to take in order to arrest the progress of this 
cult. His beliefs do not excuse his underhand efforts 
to give a false impression of the man and his writings ; 
but they explain them, as well as the outbursts of anger 
and vituperation to which he occasionally gave way. 
There was perhaps a further reason for his vexation 
and his violence. It is hard to escape from the impres- 
sion that in Voltaire's inmost soul there lurked, in 
spite of his colossal self-conceit, a vague consciousness 

441 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

of inferiority, whenever he came to measure himself 
with the great dramatist. In contrast with that mighty 
personahty, his own personaUty felt dwarfed. He was 
overpowered by something, he knew not what. To 
him were applicable the words of the soothsayer to 
Antony. Near Shakespeare, Voltaire's angel became 
a fear. 

Another conclusion to which the survey leads is that 
Voltaire really retarded the appreciation of Shakespeare 
on the Continent, instead of advancing it. No one can 
doubt the powerful impulse he gave at the outset to the 
desire displayed there to become acquainted with the 
English playwright. But the desire had manifested it- 
self before he had uttered a word. Had he preserved 
silence it would have spread in time, though altogether 
more slowly. But it would have had then a natural 
and healthy growth, instead of the somewhat forced one 
by which he caused it to be characterized. But as at 
first he awakened wide curiosity, so later he was respon- 
sible for the inadequate appreciation and unintelligent 
disparagement which to a large extent came to prevail. 
The depreciatory opinions which after the middle of the 
century he was in the habit of expressing availed noth- 
ing where Shakespeare was really known. But really 
known Shakespeare was then to a comparatively limited 
number on the Continent ; and from any desire to know 
him tlie words of the French critic kept a vast body of 
readers. Few realize to-day how mighty was Voltaire's 
influence throughout Europe during the eighteenth cen- 
tury. It was powerful in matters of religious opinion ; 
but there it came into conflict with a potent hierarchy, 

442 



GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 

with an organized body of opponents, whose interests 
were at stake as well as their convictions. But it was 
not so in literature. There his ascendency was so para- 
mount in his later life that it was almost hopeless for 
any one to stand up against it. Furthermore, in his 
views about the drama he was the advocate of long- 
cherished and well-settled beliefs. In this case he was 
fighting, not to destro}^, but to strengthen and upbuild. 
Accordingly he had on his side that conservative sen- 
timent which was arrayed against him in matters of 
religious belief. 

Germany was the first to break away from this all- 
powerful influence. Before the close of the century 
she had succeeded in emancipating herself from the 
thraldom of ideas which affected both critical apprecia- 
tion and creative activity. It was not so, however, in 
the Latin countries. In France, indeed, where the re- 
volt began, it was arrested long before it attained to the 
dignity of a revolution. The influence of Voltaire in 
holding it in check can hardly be overrated. When 
the temporary enthusiasm for Shakespeare which had 
been awakened in his country commenced to wane, his 
opinions gained steadily increasing potency. They came 
finally to be accepted as incontrovertible gospel. The 
French settled down into that state of serene satisfac- 
tion with their own drama and into that comfortable 
belief about Shakespeare which are indicated by Con- 
dorcet in his life of Voltaire. " He taught us," said 
that writer, " to perceive the merits of Shakespeare and 
to regard his dramatic works as a mine whence our poets 
could derive some treasures ; and when a ridiculous en- 

443 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

thusiasm has presented as a model to the nation of 
Racine and Voltaire the eloquent but savage and bizarre 
poet, and has wished to give us, for pictures full of 
strength and true to nature, his canvases charged with 
absurd compositions and coarse and disgusting carica- 
tures, Voltaire has defended the cause of truth and rea- 
son. He had reproached us with the too great timidity 
of our drama ; he was obliged to reproach us with being 
willing to introduce upon it the barbarous license of the 
English stage." 

So the great revolution which unsettled to their foun- 
dations all other beliefs and all other institutions left 
in that land, unquestioned and undisturbed, the time- 
honored traditions of the classical stage. Other instru- 
mentalities there were which contributed to this result ; 
but to Voltaire's influence, more than to any single 
agency, was due the fact that the stately fabric of the 
French drama rode unchanged and uninjured through 
those troubled waters. The sway of his opinions lasted 
long after his death. It was not indeed till the coming 
of a poetic spirit greater than his own that it was over- 
thrown. There was, to be sure, a period during his life- 
time when his ascendency seemed to be seriously shaken. 
The counter-current of opposition ran so violently that 
it gave him the most depressing views of the future of 
literature. But it only threatened his supremacy; it 
never came near subverting it. Even had not events 
come speedily to the aid of his beliefs, it is doubtful if 
his predominance would have been seriously disturbed. 
His opinions were all-powerful, because he was the gen- 
uine representative of the taste of his age. That fact 

444 



GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 

explains both the great vogue they had at the time and 
the little vogue they have had since. The taste he rep- 
resented is no longer our taste. In consequence the 
views he took often seem to us peculiarly insufficient. 
His criticism of the great English authors, whether favor- 
able or unfavorable, would meet with little response now. 
Most of all is this true in the case of Shakespeare. 
Voltaire's intellect, keen, searching, and brilliant, felt 
on one side the full attraction of the personality of 
the dramatist. On other sides he lacked entirely the 
comprehension that springs from knowledge or from 
sympathy. 

To Voltaire, indeed, much of Shakespeare always 
remained a sealed book. His incapacity of apprecia- 
tion could never have been remedied. It was congen- 
ital ; it was due to his innate lack of insight into man's 
spiritual nature. This is the wanting sense which ranks 
him far below either Shakespeare or Dante, and explains 
his inability to comprehend either. Towards both the 
Italian and the English author his attitude was essen- 
tially the same, though owing to circumstances the latter 
occupied much more of his thought and attention. It is 
additional proof of the vast influence he exerted that the 
estimate he formed of both became to a great extent the 
estimate of his contemporaries. In Italy and England 
respectively it was modified or rejected altogether by the 
fuller knowledge and deeper appreciation possessed by the 
countrymen of the two poets. But outside of their own 
lands Voltaire's opinion of Dante and Shakespeare be- 
came for a while the one generally received. It could 
not last indeed ; but for the time being it ruled, wher- 

445 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

ever national partiality failed to counteract the credit 
of the critic. English opinion, which was but little 
affected by Voltaire's view of Shakespeare, was a good 
deal influenced by his view of Dante. It is not that 
the depreciatory judgment expressed always originated 
with him ; it is that his authority gave to it both 
extension and stability. It is in truth a suggestive fact 
that a large share of the critical utterance about the 
Italian poet which came from the islanders during the 
eighteenth century was essentially the same as that 
which prevailed on the Continent in regard to the Eng- 
lish dramatist. There is a similarity which approaches 
the ridiculous not only in the ideas which were enter- 
tained, but in the very words in which the ideas were 
clothed. For both matter and expression Voltaire was 
in each case largely responsible. 

The radical change of opinion about Dante which 
was to come over the vast body of educated men, Vol- 
taire never lived to see. He died while the contest 
was still going on in his own land about Shakespeare, 
and while the result seemed still in doubt. Had he 
remained quietly at Ferney he might have rejoiced 
in witnessing the full triumph of his own views ; for 
it is not impossible that he would have attained to 
the age of Fontenelle, whose length of life was often 
in his thoughts during his later 3'ears. So far as his 
own happiness was concerned, it was fortunate that 
he did not. The seed he had sown was destined to 
yield a harvest which would have been little to his 
liking. Like Cadmus he had planted dragon's-teeth ; 
and they were destined to spring up armed men. But 

446 



GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 

the revolution for which he had done so much to 
prepare the way would have brought him personally 
nothing but grief and despair. He would have been 
filled with amazement and horror at the results to 
which the doctrines he preached had unexpectedly led. 
For his sympathies lay wholly with the old rdgime. 
The favor of courts was dear to him; the society of 
princes and nobles was congenial. A wise and benevo- 
lent despotism was in his eyes the ideal of human 
government — not in itself so very objectionable, were 
it not so extraordinarily rare to find a despotism either 
wise or benevolent. He himself was delighted to play 
the rSle of grand seigneur, and he did it worthily. He 
built homes for the industrious poor, he established 
manufactures, he converted a desert wild into the seat 
of a flourishing community. But nothing would have 
filled him with as great indignation as to have his 
subjects begin to question his right to control their 
conduct for their own good. So it was well for him 
that he saw not what the future had in store. He 
lived on unconscious of the storm which was gather- 
ing ; he died before the night of terror that was creep- 
ing on had enveloped him in its gloom. 

As in government his sympathies were with the old 
regime, so in literature they were with the old drama. 
Returning from England he had preached the doctrines 
of a pale romanticism ; he had followed afar off some 
of its methods. But the moment the men who had 
imbibed his principles began to press on in the course 
in which he had led the way, the moment they 
began to carry his doctrines to their legitimate conclu- 

447 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

sions, he shrank back in disgust and horror. He would 
admit only the slightest possible modification of the 
practices of the ancient drama in the way of enlarging 
its scope and treatment. He did all that Lay in his 
power to break down what was called the dignity of 
history. He applied to it the most opprobrious terms. 
But to the dignity of the drama he remained faithful. 
He constantly complained of the coldness of French 
tragedy, of its languor, its dulness; but to the conven- 
tions which made it cold and languid and dull save 
when genius of the first order came to its rescue, he 
clung with passionate tenacity. 

The conduct of Voltaire is in truth the familiar story 
of the men who produce revolutions shuddering at the 
words and acts of the men whom revolutions produce. 
More^than any other person he was responsible for the 
prevalence of that habit of inquiry which questions the 
truth of all received facts and tests the reasonableness 
of all received principles. He was further responsible 
for that scepticism which struck at the heart . of all 
accepted beliefs and of all traditional ideas. It was 
hopeless for him to expect that the spirit of denial 
which he had called up should spare the institutions 
which he himself regarded as sacred. The critical 
attitude which took no man's mere word for the truth 
of the opinions he held, no matter how generally 
regarded as truth, was not likely to stop short at the 
discussion of the opinions Voltaire himself cherished 
and promulgated. He was accordingly struck aghast 
when the consequences of his own teachings came to 
confront him in matters where he himself had not 

448 



GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 

changed. He had raged against all conservatism ex- 
cept the particular varieties of it which he himself 
affected. In the drama he was as strenuous a defender 
of the traditional and conventional as was in religion 
the most bigoted adherent of the creeds he ridiculed. 
It was the existence of heretical views about the stage 
which embittered him against Shakespeare, to whom 
he attributed their increasing prevalence. It was this 
which led him to resort to discreditable devices to 
lower the estimate in which that dramatist was held. 
It was the dislike and dread he felt for the great 
Elizabethan which forces upon the attention one of 
the most curious phases of Voltaire's character. It is 
a striking example of the inconsistency of human na- 
ture that the great apostle of tolerance in matters of 
religion and government was one of the most intolerant 
of men in matters of literature. To read his words, one 
would fancy that fire, fagot, and sword, had it lain in 
his power, would have been the doom of those who per- 
sisted in i^roraulgating opinions which he deemed in- 
jurious to art. When it came to the infliction of the 
penalty, the real kindliness of his nature would have led 
him to spare the destined victim ; but the spirit which 
prompted the persecution would have never been absent. 
We have seen that he would have been glad to prevent 
the publication of Le Tourneur's translation of Shake- 
speare. There are instances when he displayed a desire 
to employ active measures to suppress criticism which 
was directed against his own views or was intended to 
uphold views of which he disapproved. As men perse- 
cuted others in the name of religion, so he would have 
29 449 



SHAKESPEARE AND VOLTAIRE 

persecuted them in the name of taste. Without realiz- 
ing it he made use of precisely the same sort of argu- 
ments for protecting the integrity of the one which 
excited his derision when applied to the defence of the 
other. That refined and excellent art which France 
possessed must be guarded by the severest measures 
from debasement and profanation. No alien influences 
must be permitted to contaminate its purity or threaten 
its permanence. He could not perceive that the art 
which cannot take care of itself will never be saved 
by any repressive measures undertaken to preserve it 
from decay. 

It is an easy thing to find fault with Voltaire, and 
unfortunately it is as easy a thing to give substantial 
reasons for finding fault. His literary life, like that of 
Pope, was largely one of intrigue and double-dealing, 
of wanton attacks upon others, of unfounded suspicions 
of attacks upon himself. In one way it has been amus- 
ing to trace the windings of the tortuous course he pur- 
sued in regard to Shakespeare. In another way it has 
been depressing : for after all it can never be anything 
but an unpleasant task to expose the foibles and faults 
of a great nature. In his case there are special reasons 
for reluctance. When everything has been said against 
Voltaire that can justly be said, there remains to his 
credit an incalculable sum of services rendered to the 
progress of the race. He must be taken with his limi- 
tations. With all his inconsistencies, his perversities, 
his mendacities, his ignoble personal quarrels, he was a 
man of generosity as well as of genius. Much more 
than this can be said. We can never forget how cour- 

450 



GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 

ageous and how mighty a soldier he was in the war for 
humanity. To vast multitudes in every station of life 
he brought the gospel of liberty of thought and of 
speech, the spirit of sympathy with the unfortunate 
and the oppressed. But as to the men of his own 
time he was an inspiration, so also he was a fear. 
Before that matchless ridicule, imbecility, narrowness, 
and intolerance cowered affrighted. At the sound of 
that trumpet-call which demanded that justice should 
no longer be mute as well as blind, the persecutions of 
bigotry were stayed, the decisions of iniquitous tribunals 
were reversed, the indifference and inaction of men in 
high places were converted into at least a pretended 
zeal for righteousness and the right. His services in 
these ways more than offset his questionable practices 
in other fields. That he failed at times to render the 
justice he demanded is little more than an illustra- 
tion of the infirmities of our common nature. But 
much can be forgiven to one who did so much for his 
fellow-men. 



451 



INDEX 



INDEX 

In this index, for the convenience of readers, the dates of birth 
and death of the persons mentioned have been given, wherever 
ascertainable. 'J'he names of the works of Shalcespeare or Vol- 
taire, mentioned in the text, will be found only under their names; 
and to those of Voltaire the dates of original publication have been 
given from Bengesco's bibliography. In the case of some works — 
notably in that of the Dlclionnaire Phdosophique — this is no guide 
to the date of the appearance of the passage found here, or of the 
article cited. 



Addison, Joseph [1672-1719], 27, 

28, 91, 138, 142, 157, 247, 258, 

266, 288, 315, 347; his Cato, 50, 

52, 62, 63, 70, 81, 92, 137, 146, 

199, 317, 350. 
AdJile de Ponthieu, La Place's, 

166. 
iENEiD, Vergil's, 14. 
^scHYLUs, 126, 292. 
Alexandrine verses, 225, 408. 
Algarotti, Francesco, Count [1712- 

1764], 103. 
Alma, Prior's, 28. 
Almida, Madame Celesia's, 305. 
A^fDROMAQUE, Racine's, 50, 222. 
ArPBL Aux Nations, see under 

Voltaire. 
Appian, 108. 
Ariosto, Ludovico [1474-1533], 

244. 
Aristophanes, 268. 
Aristotle, 158, 170, 200, 249, 

349, 433, 434, 435, 436. 
Arne, Thomas Augustine [1710- 

1778], 341. 
Athalie, Racine's, 140, 239, 386. 
Ayscough, George Edward (died 
1779), 305. 

45 



Bacon, Francis [1561-1626], 29, 

303. 
Bajazet, Racine's, 364. 
Ballantyne, Archibald, 15 n. 
Barktti, Giuseppe Marc' Antonio 

[1719-1789], 411, 415, 427; his 

reply to Voltaire, 406-409. 
Baron, Michel [1653-1729], 208. 
Barrington, Daines [1727-1800], 

156-158. 
Bastille, 1, 58, 59, 67. 
Battle of the Books, Swift's, 

156. 
Bayle, Pierre [1647-1706], 19. 
Beattie, James [1735-1803], 403. 
Beauclerk, Topham [1739-1780], 

295. 
Berkeley, George, Bishop [1685- 

1753], 2, 26. 
Bernis, Cardinal de [1715-1794], 

221. 
Blair, Hugh [1718-1800], 246, 

316. 
Blank Verse, 220, 224, 229, 312. 
Boileau-Despreaux, Nicolas 

[1636-1711], 337. 
Boleyn, Anne [1507-1536], 273. 
Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, 
5 



INDEX 



Viscount [1678-1751], 2, 9, 10, 

15, 46, 72, 87, 88, 116, 137, 316, 

317. 
Bond, William [died 1735], 88, 89. 
BoswELL, James [1740-1795], 288, 

295, 314. 
Brutus, Lee's, 75-77. 
Buckingham, George Villiers, 

Duke of [1648-1721], 27, 48. 
Butler, Samuel [1612-1680], 27, 

28. 
Byron, George Gordon, Lord [1.788- 

1824], 43. 

Calais, 1. 

Galas family, 211, 886. 

Calderon [1601-1681], 155, 235, 

236, 320, 421. 
Campaign, Addison's, 28. 
Canada, 187, 318, 385, 435. 
Carre, Jerome, pseudonym of Vol- 
taire, 192, 198, 199, 205. 
Carlyle, Thomas [1795-1881], 

317. 
Castle of Otranto, Walpole's, 

259, 264, 265, 272. 
Catharine II., Empress of Russia 

[1729-1796], 210, 332. 
Catiline, Ben Jonson's, 32, 33, 34. 
Catiline, see Rome Saiivic, under 

Voltaire. 
Cato, Addison's, 50, 52, 62, 63, 

69, 70, 81, 92, 137, 146, 199, 

317, 350. 
Catuelan, Comte de, 332. 
Celesia (Dorothea Mallet), Ma- 
dame [1738-1790], 305. 
Charles II., King of England 

[1630-1685], 48, 61, 141, 337. 
Chesterfield, Philip Dormer 

Stanhope, Earl of [1694-1773], 

9, 86, 137, 147, 316. 
Choiseul, Due de [1719-1785] 274. 
Choiseul, Duchesse de, 270-277. 
Gibber, Colley [1671-1757], 61, 

90, 133. 



Gibber, Susannah Maria (Arne), 
[1714-1766], 6, 90. 

Cicero, 32. 

CiD, Corneille's, 156, 336. 

Cinna, Corneille's, 184, 195, 198, 
220, 221, 307, 386. 

Cirey, 59, 103. 

Clairon, Mademoiselle [1723- 
1803], 205. 

Clarissa, Richardson's, 333. 

Clarke, Samuel [1675-1729], 2, 26, 

Clitandre, Corneille's, 215. 

Clive, Mrs. Catharine [1711-1785], 
6. 

Coke, Sir Edward [1552-1634], 
255. 

Collins, Anthony [1676-1729], 26. 

Colman, George [1732-1794], 305. 

Comte d'Essex Thomas, Corneille's, 
261. 

CoNDORCET, Marquis de [1743- 
1794], 443. 

CoNGREVE, William [1670-1729], 
2, 3, 61, 62, 337, 338. 

CoRNEiLLE, Pierre [1606-1684], 9, 
81, 104, 155, 170, 179, 180, 243, 
248, 249, 254, 261, 268, 269, 
271, 272, 306, 307, 309, 313, 314, 
319, 335, 356, 359, 360, 361, 366, 
367, 372, 373, 374, 380, 385-390, 
393, 398, 415, 419, 420, 426, 
427; English estimate of, as com- 
pared with Shakespeare, 63, 136, 
157, 182-192, 316, 383, 404 ; 
Voltaire's similar estimate of, 63, 
133, 163, 191-198, 206, 216, 219- 
225, 237, 240, 252 ; Voltaire's 
Commentaries on, 208-218 ; com- 
pared with Calderon, 235. 

CoRNEiLLE, Thomas [1625-1709], 
261. 

CovENT Garden Theatre, 306. 

Cowley, Abraham [1618-1667], 29. 

CowPER, William [1731-1800], 294. 

Cradock, Joseph [1742-1826], 305. 
Critical Review, 20?!., 291, 401. 



456 



INDEX 



Cromwell, Oliver [1599-1658], 22, 

34. 
Cursory Remarks on Tragedy, 

ON Shakespeare, Taylor's, 310. 

D'Alembert, Jean le Kond [1717- 

1783], 367, 368, 369-377, 379, 

382, 388, 389, 391-395, 420. 
Dante, Alighieii [1265-1321], 19, 

50, 207, 445. 
D'Argental, Comte [1700-1788], 

191, 192, 204, 208, 233, 327, 359, 

368, 378, 391, 400, 401, 412. 
Davies, Thomas [1712 ?-1785], 

292, 403. 
De Belloy, Pierre Laurent Buy- 

rette [1727-1775], 414. 
Deffanb, Madame dii [1697-1780], 

188, 264, 265, 272, 274-277, 

354. 
Denham, Sir John [1615-1669], 29. 
Dennis, John [1657-1734], 12, 38, 

282. 
Descartes, Eene [1596-1650], 157. 
Devil upon Two Sticks, Foote's, 

342. 
Dispensary, Garth's, 28. 
Discoveries, Jonson's, 230. 
DisTREST Mother, Philips's, 223. 
Dodington, George Bubb, Lord 

Melconibe [1691-1762] 2, 88. 
Dodsley's Museum, 156. 
Dodsley's Select Collection of Old 

Plays (1744), 38. 
D'Olivet, Abbe [1682-1768], 207. 
Dorset, Charles Sackville, Earl of 

[1638-1706], 27. 
Dramatic Art, see Art Dra- 

matique, under Voltaire. 
Dramatic Miscellanies, Davies', 

292, 403. 
Drury Lane Theatre, 6, 76, 89, 

149, 305, 306. 
Dryden, John [1631-1700], 27, 

139, 149, 303, 337. 
Du Belloi, see De Belloy. 



Ducis, Jean Francois [1733-1816], 

327-329, 334, 335. 
Dudley, Robert, see Leicester. 
Duncombe, William [1690-1769], 

74, 75, 88. 

Elements of Criticism, Kames', 
241-257. 

Elizabeth, Queen of England 
[1533-1603], 261, 273, 373, 377. 

English Merchant, Colman's, 
305, 306. 

Ennius, 104. 

Epigoniad, Wilkie's, 147. 

Eschenburg, Johann Joachim 
[1743-1820], 290, 423. 

Essay on Falstaff, Morgann's, 
404. 

Essay on the Genius and Writ- 
ings OF Shakespeare, Mrs. 
Montagu's, 288-304, 313 ; trans- 
lated into French, 411-413. 

Essex, Comte d', Thomas Cor- 
neille's, 261. 

Essex, Robert Devereux, Earl of 
[1567-1601], 262. 

Euripides, 93, 253, 278, 291, 349, 
374, 415. 

Falkener, Sir Everard [1684- 

1758], 2, 80, 81, 90, 135. 
Fanatisme, le, see Mahomet, under 

Voltaire. 
Ferney, 278, 327, 353, 355, 367, 

378, 379, 405, 413, 439, 446. 
Fielding, Henry [1707-1754], 84. 
Fletcher, John [1579-1625], 7, 8. 
Fontaine-Malherbe, Jean [1740?- 

1780], 332. 
Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de 

[1657-1757], 417, 446. 
FoNTENOY, battle of, 150. 
Foote, Samuel [1720-1777], 148, 

158, 342. 
Francklin, Thomas [1721-1784], 

45, 143 w., 306. 



457 



INDEX 



Frederick II., The Great [1712- 
1786], 41, 42, 161, 278, 317, 
432-437. 

French Academy, 42, 209, 210, 
332, 361, 367, 369, 370, 371, 
374, 376, 378-383, 392, 394, 
396, 398-400, 419, 420. 

French Language, universality 
of, 41-44. 

Garrick, David [1717-1779], 6, 
86, 87, 94, 146, 152, 292, 305, 
332, 370, 383, 3S4, 405, 409, 
412 ; his alteration of Hamlet, 
339 ; devises the Shakespeare 
jubilee, 340-344 ; Davies' life 
of, 292. 

Garrick in the Shades, 343. 

Garth, Samuel [1660-1718], 27, 
28. 

Gastrell, Francis, 340. 

Gay, John [1688-1732], 2. 

Gazette Litt^raire de l' Eu- 
rope, 246. 

Georgia, colonization of, 86. 

Gideon, Hill's, 151. 

GiLDON, Charles[1665-1724], 140 n. 

GiLLE, GiLLES, the hufToon of the 
theatres of the fairs, 163, 188, 
208, 271, 287, 374, 379, 383, 
385. 

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 
[1749-1832] ; his Goetz von 
Berlichingen, 435. 

Gray's Inn Journal, Murpliy's, 
158. 

Grenville, George [1712-1770], 
291. 

GoRBODUC, Sackville and Norton's 
35-40, 366. 

Grimm, Friedrich Melchior, Baron 
[1723-1807], 166, 168, 205, 351- 
353, 355 «., 397, 398, 415 ?^, 416, 
429. 

Guthrie, William [1708-1770], 
155. 



Hamlet, Ducis', 327, 334. 
Hamlet's Soliloquy, Voltaire's 

version of, 64-66, 175, 287, 357- 
Hanmer, Sir Thomas [1677-1746], 

348. 
Harris, James [1709-1780], 292. 
Haymarket Theatre, 342. 
Henderson, John [1747-1785], 

332. 
Henry V., Hill's, 85. 
Heraclius, Calderon's, 235-236. 
HifeRACLius, Corneille's, 235-236. 
Herder, Johann Gottfried von 

[1744-1803], 320. 
Hill, Aaron [1685-1750], 75, 76, 

113, 116, 148; account of, 83- 

87 ; adapts Zaire and Alzire, 87- 

94 ; attacks Voltaire and French 

stage, 150-154. 
Historic Doubts on the Life 

AND Reign of Richard III., 

Walpole's, 262, 271, 273, 274, 

277. 
Home, Henry, see Karnes. 
Homer, 49, 50, 93, 150, 307, 378, 

416. 
Horace, 95, 158. 
Hudibras, Butler's, 28. 
Hume, David [1711-1776], 147, 

246, 316. 

Iliad, Homer's, 147. 

India, 187. 

Institutes, Coke's, 255. 
Iphig^nie, Racine's, 239, 250, 257. 

Jansenists, 208. 

Jeffreys George, [1678-1755], 145. 

Johnson, Samuel [1709-1784], 15, 

295, 302, 309, 312, 313, 314, 348, 

406; his criticism of Voltaire, 

281-284, 288. 
Jonson, Ben [1573 ?-1637], 7, 8, 

32, 33, 34, 39, 149, 155, 230. 
Journal EncyclopSdique, 182, 

190, 192. 



458 



INDEX 



Journal of Tottk to the Heb- 
rides, Boswell's, 295. 
Jubilee, The Stratford, 340-347. 
Jubilee-ode, Garrick's, 292, 341. 

Kames, Henry Home, Lord [1696- 

1782], 240-258. 
Kenrick, William [1725 ?-l 779], 

402-409. 

La Harpe, Jean Francois de [1739- 
1803], 165, 166, 170, 233, 367, 
373, 374, 375, 380, 399, 410, 414, 
420, 422, 427. 

La Mare, Abbe de, 105. 

La Motte, Antoine Houdart de 
[1672-1731], 320. 

La Place, Pierre Antoine de [1707- 
1793], 34, 219, 26.5, 328, 330, 
428 ; account of, 164-167 ; his 
version of Shakespeare, 167-176 ; 
Voltaire's criticism of, 202, 221, 
233. 

Le Blanc, Abbe [1707-1774?], 307. 

Lecouvreur, Adrienne [1692- 
1730], 346. 

Lee, Nathaniel [1653-1692] 75-77. 

Leicester, Robert Dudley, Earl of, 
[1532?-1588] 261, 262. 

Le Kain, Henri Louis [1728-1778], 
112, 367, 436. 

Le.ssing, Gotthold Ephraim [1729- 
1781], 45, 127, 140 n., 173, 302, 
319, 320. 

Le Tourneur, Pierre [1736-1788], 
34, 223, 326, 382, 383, 387, 388, 
390, 391, 394, 400, 408, 409, 410, 
413, 415, 420, 428, 429, 449 ; his 
version of Shakespeare, 330-354, 
422-426 ; Voltaire's attack on, 
355-379. 

Letters Concerning the English 
Nation, see Lettres Philoso- 
phiques, under Voltaire. 

LiLLO, George [1693-1739], 124. 

Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, 94. 



Locke, John [1632-1704], 2, 26, 

132, 240, 265. 
London Merchant, Lillo's, 124. 
London Review, The, 402, 409. 
Lope de Vega [1562-1635], 155, 

161, 235, 238, 320, 325. 
Lyttelton, George, Baron [1709- 

1773], 2, 137, 291. 

Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 

Lord [1800-1859], 402. 
Maffei, Francesco Scipione, Mar- 

chese di [1675-1755], 140, 266, 

267. 
Mallet, David [1705?-1765], 85, 

151 n., 305. 
Marie Antoinette, queen of 

France [1755-1793], 368, 389, 

390. 
Marly, 53. 
Marmontel, Jean Franfois [1723- 

1799], 233, 367, 375; Le Tour- 

neur's criticism of, 336-340. 
Mason, William [1724-1797], 401. 
Mercier, Louis Sebastien [1740- 

1814], 180 ?i., 349. 
Merope, Hill's, 152-154. 
Merope, Jeffrey's, 141-145. 
Merope, Maffei's, 140, 266, 267. 
Miller, James [1706-1744], 133. 
Milton, John [1608-1674], 8, 28, 

48-50. 
Miscellanies, Barrington's, 157. 
MOL^, Fran9ois Rene [1734-1802], 

383. 
MoLiicRE, Jean Baptiste Poquelin 

[1622-1673], 9, 268, 316, 335, 

337, 346, 366. 
Montagu, Mrs. Elizabeth [1720- 

1800], 249, 370, 378, 405, 423, 

433; Essay of, attacking Voltaire, 

288-308; Taylor's Reply to Essay 

of, 309, 313, 314 ; translation into 

French of Essay of, 411-414: 

Voltaire's reply to Essay, 417, 

420. 



459 



INDEX 



Monthly Review, The, 401, 404. 
Moore, John [1727-1802], 436. 
More, Hannah [1745-1833], 293. 
MORGANN, Maurice [1726-1802], 

404. 
Murphy, Arthur [1727-1805], 149, 

158, 305, 306. 
Mulberry-tree at New Place, 

Stratford, 340. 

Necker, Madame [1739-1794], 383, 

405, 406. 
Newton, Sir Isaac [1642-1727], 2, 

26, 132, 190, 240, 266. 
Night Thoughts, Young's, 333. 
No One's Enemy but his Own, 

Murphy's, 306. 

Oldfield, Anne [1683-1730], 345. 
OssiAN, 333. 

Otway, Thomas [1652-1685], 140, 
182, 186, 187, 193, 202, 247. 

Paradise Lost, Milton's, 28, 49. 
Paradise REGAiNED.Milton's, 28. 
Pepys, Samuel [1633-1703], 115. 
Pkrs^e, iEschylus', 126. 
Peterborough, Charles Mordaunt, 

Earl of [1658-1735], 15. 
PafcDRE, Racine's, 250. 
Philips, Ambrose [1765?-1749], 222. 
Philips, John [1676-1709], 28. 
Philological Enquiries, Harris's, 

292. 
Philosophical Dictionary, see 

Dictionnaire Philosophique, under 

Voltaire. 
Philosophical Letters, see 

Lettres Philosophiques, under 

Voltaire. 
Pierrot, contemptuous diminu- 
tive of proper name Pierre, 374, 

379, 385. 
Piozzi, Hester Lynch [1741-1821], 

295, 406. 



Pitt, William, Earl of Chatham 

[1708-1778], 187. 
Plaindealer, The, 88. 
Plautus, 347. 
Plutarch, 74, 326. 
Poitiers, 376. 
Pompadour, Marquise de [1721- 

1764], 388. 
Pondicherry, 188. 
Pope, Alexander [1688-1744], 2, 

15, 38, 86, 87, 88, 116, 134, 142, 

151 n., 159, 197, 231 n., 307, 348, 

450 ; Voltaire's admiration of, 

27. 
Potter, Robert [1721-1804], 292. 
Pri5vost, Abbe [1697-1763], 187. 
Prior, Matthew [1664-1721], 27, 

28. 
Pritciiard, Mrs. Hannah [1711- 

1768], 6, 24. 
Pkompter, The, 75, 89. 

Quintus Gurtius, 278. 

Rabelais, Fran5ois [1495 ?-1553], 
27. 

Racine, Jean Baptiste [1639-1699], 
9, 104, 133, 139, 140, 180, 206, 
222, 223, 239, 249, 250, 251, 
268, 269, 271, 272, 306, 309, 
313, 33.5, 337, 356, 359, 360, 
361, 364, 366, 367, 372-374, 
376, 379, 380, 385, 386, 387, 
393, 415, 419, 420, 426, 435, 
444 ; English estimate of, 136, 
156, 182, 186, 187, 193, 243, 
248, 253, 254, 316; Voltaire's 
preference of, to Corneille, 214, 
215. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter [1552 ? -1618], 
262, 303. 

Reonard, Jean rran9ois [1655- 
1709], 268. 

Reynolds, Sir Joshua [1723-1792], 
292, 295. 



460 



INDEX 



RiccoBONi, Madame [1714-1792], 

410. 
Richardson, Samuel [1699-1761], 

Richardson, William [1743-1814], 

316. 
Richelieu, Cardinal [1585-1642], 

270, 387. 
Richelieu, Due de [1696-1788], 

59, 386-388. 
Rochester, John Wilmot, Earl of 

[1648-1680], 27, 28, 48, 337. 
Roman Revenge, Hill's, 116. 
Romantic, 350. 
Romeo, Duels', 327. 
Roscommon, Wcntwoi-tli Dillon, 

Earl of [1633 ?-1685], 27. 
Rousseau, Pierre [1716-1785], 182. 
RowE, Nicholas [1674-1718], 134, 

140, 348. 
RuTLEDGE, James [1743-1794], 410. 
Rtmer, Thomas [1641-1713], 38, 

39, 366, 381. 

Salmasius, Claudius [1588-1653], 

48. 
Samson Agonistes, Milton's, 28. 
Saurin, Bernard Joseph [1706- 

1781], 318. 
Saxo Grammaticus [died c. 1208], 

201. 
Schroder, Friedrich Ludwig[1744- 

1816], 319. 
Search for Happiness, More's, 

293. 
Sewell, George [died 1726], 348. 
Shadwell, Thomas [1642 ?-]692], 

167. 
Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley, 

Earl of [1671-1713], 8. 
Shakespeare, William [1564- 
1616] ; his 

All 's Well that Ends well, 
115. 

Antony and Cleopatra, 3, 
167, 285. 

461 



As You Like It, 115, 140. 

Coriolanus, 282, 284. 

Cymbeline, 167. 

Hamlet, 3, 4, 78, 167, 184, 199, 
219, 253, 282. 292, 327, 336, 
403 ; Garrick's alteration of, 
339 ; grave-diggers' scene in, 
172, 259, 339 ; Voltaire's imi- 
tation and criticism of, 124- 
130, 143, 201, 284, 365 ; his 
outline of the plot of, 197 ; his 
version of soliloijuy in, 64-66, 
175, 287. 

Henry IV., Part i., 3, 253. 

Henry IV., Part ii., 3, 250-252, 
297. 

Henry V., 3, 85, 285, 286, 364. 

Henry VI., Part iii., 167 

Henry VIII., 273. 

Julius CiESAR, 3, 4, 10, 30, 70, 
72, 92, 114, 167, 287, 297, 333, 
424 ; Voltaire's imitations and 
translation of, 47, 97-100, 118, 
175, 216, 220, 221, 224-239, 
260, 282, 285, 307, 320, 325, 
331, 335, 357, 363, 407, 411, 
416. 

Lear, 3, 364 ; Voltaire's use of, 
79, 80. 

Love's Labor's Lost, 115. 

Macbeth, 3, 149, 167, 185, 297, 
364, Voltaire's imitation of, 
121-124. 

Measure for Measure, 115. 

Merry Wives of Windsor, 
167. 

Midsummer Night's Dream, 
115. 

Much Ado About Nothing, 
115. 

Othello, 3, 167, 202, 234, 285, 
333, 354, 364, 415 ; Voltaire's 
imitation of, 78-83, 124. 

Richard II., 3. 

Richard III., 3, 167, 168, 185; 
Voltaire's account of, 188-190. 



INDEX 



/ 



Romeo and Juliet, 3, 139, 140, 
327, 334, 364. 

Taming of the Shrew, 115. 

Tempest, 140, 133. 

TiMON, 167. 

Titus ANDRONicas, 307. 

Troilus and Cressida, 3. 

Twelfth Night, 115, 116, 140. 

Winter's Tale, 115, 273. 
Sherlock, Martin [died 1797], 

222 w., 317, 431-434. 
Short View of Tragedy, Ry- 

mer's, 39. 
Sidney, Sir Philip [1554-1586], 

303. 
Simmons, Samuel, 49. 
SiRVEN Family, 386. 
Sophocles, 45, 63, 137, 278, 289, 

291, 347, 349, 374, 415. 
SouTiiERNE, Thomas [1660-1746], 

140. 
Spenser, Edmund [1552 ?-1599], 

29, 303. 
Splendid Shilling, Philips', 28. 
Staple of News, Jonson's, 230. 
Steele, Sir Richard [1672-1729], 

61. 
Sterne, Laurence [1713-1768], 

331. 
Stratford Jubilee, The, 340-347. 
Suard, Jean Baptiste Antoiue 

[1733-1817], 412. 
Swift, Jonathan [1667-1745], 2, 

27, 135, 156. 

Tasso, Torquato [1544-1595], 244. 
Taste, see Gout, under Voltaire. 
Taylor, Edward [died 1797], 309- 

314. 
Theatre Anglois, La Place's, 34, 

167. 
Theobald, Lewis [1688-1744], 

201, 230, 348. 
Thomson, James [1700-1748], 2, 

27, 88. 
Thrale, see Piozzi. 



Thucydides, 278. 
TiLLOTSON, John [1630-1694], 26. 
TOLAND, John [1670-1722], 26. 
TONSON, Jacob [1656? -1736], 49. 
Tragedies in Prose, 323. 
Tragi-Comedy, 7, 281. 
Tristram Shandy, Sterne's, 331. 



Unities, the Dramatic, 7, 31, 
114, 173, 254, 265, 273, 281, 283, 
303, 309, 311, 433. 



Vanbrugh, Sir John [1664-1726] 

3, 61, 247. 
Velches, 323, 328, 364, 368, 379, 

384 ; defined, 321. 
Venice Preserved, Otway's, 202. 
Vergil, 50, 104, 278, 285. 
ViLLEMAiN, Abel Francois [1790- 

1870], 40. 
Voltaire, Francois Marie Arouet 
de [1694-1778] ; his 

Alzire (1736), 93, 113, 304. 

ApPEL 1 TOUTES LES NATIONS 

DE l'Europe (1761), 191-205, 

219, 233, 234, 318. 
Art Dramatique, 253, 284- 

287. 
Brutus (1731), 46, 72-77, 83, 

148, 304. 
C.\NDiDE (1759) 48, 289. 
Catiline, see Royne Sauvee. 

CONTES DE GuILLAUME Vad6 

(1764), 205. 
Corneille, Commentaries on 

(1764), 208-218, 220, 259, 320, 

331, 336, 339, 367. 
Corneille, Theatre de, avec 

des Commentaires, etc. (1764), 

208-210. 

DiCTIONNAIRE PhILOSOPHIQUE 

(1764), 19, 48, 22.5, 253, 283, 
ficossAisE, L' (1760), 305. 
Epic Poetry, Essay on (1727), 

46, 47-52. 



462 



INDEX 



Epop^k, 48. 

Eriphyle (1779), 74, 78, 124- 
126. 

Fanatisme, Le, see Mahomet. 

FONTENOY, La bataille de 
(1745), 150. 

Gout, 252. 

Henriade, La (1728 ; iu 1723 
as La Ligue), 2, 47, 87, 147 ; 
criticism of, by Kames, 244, 
248, 254, 255. 

Homme aux quarante 6cus, L' 
(1768), 250. 

Indiscret, L' (1725), 306. 

iRfcNE (1779), 318, 396, 417, 419. 

Lettre a l'Acadi^.mie Fran- 
5AISE (1776), 255, 257, 318, 
346, 358, 378, 380-385, 389, 
392, 395, 398-403, 405-409, 
411, 412, 420, 429 ; its cliar- 
acter described, 361-366 ; ar- 
rangements for its public 
reading, 369-377. 
Lettres Philosophiques ( 1734), 
Letters coucerning the English 
Nation (1733), 46, 53-60, 80, 
135, 221, 287, 427. 
Lois de Minos, Les (1773), 

327. 

Mahomet (1742), 74, 119, 133, 

142, 149, 159, 232, 304, 436 ; 

Macbeth imitated in, 121-124. 

M6R0PE (1744), 74, 100, 119, 

305 ; preface to, 140-142, 144, | 

148, 150, 266 ; Hill's adapta- 
tion of, 152-154. 

MoRT de CiSsar, La (1736; 
spurious edition in 1735), 71, 
74, 163, 164, 227, 260, 304: 
account of, 95-117. 

CEdipe (1719), 74, 436. 

Oreste, (1750), 74, 306. 

Orphelin de la Chine (1755), 

149, 161,289, 305. 



Questions sur c'Encyclop^die 
(1770-1772), 404. 

Rome Sauv^e (1752), or Cati- 
lina ou Rome Sauv^e, 34, 
100 ; account of, 30-32. 

Scythes, Les (1767), 305. 

Si^miramis (1749), 74, 78, 143, 
144, 158, 159, 305, 329, 403; 
imitation of Shakespeare in, 
126; ghost scene in, compared 
with Hamlet, 128-131. 

Tancr^de (1761), 205, 305. 

Welches Discours aux (1764), 
in Contes de Guillaume Vade. 

Zaire (1733), 76, 95, 100, 119, 
135, 138, 140, 304 ; imitation 
of Shakespeare in, 78-83, 124; 
Hill's adaptation of, 87-93, 113. 

Waller, Edmund [1606-1687], 29. 

Walpole, Horace, Earl of Orford 
[1717-1797], 188, 288, 296, 354, 
401; his correspondence with Vol- 
taire, 258-280. 

Walpole, Sir Robert, 2, 86, 247. 

Warburton, William [1698-1779], 
15, 26, 231 11., 348. 

Warton, Thomas [1728-1790], 292. 

Wieland, Christoph Martin [1733- 
1813], 423. 

WiLKiE, William [1721-1772], 147. 

WoFFiNGTON, Margaret [1714?- 
1760], 6. 

WooLSTON, Thomas [1670-1733] 
26. 

Wycherley, William [1640 ? - 
1716], 3, 61, 337. 

Yates, Mrs. Mary Ann [1728- 

1787], 306. 
Young, Edward [1683-1765], 2, 

295, 333. 

Zara, Hill's, 88-90, 133. 
ZoBEiDE, Cradock's, 305. 



463 



314-77-1 



